I’ve been waiting til I’m more settled to do more lovely liver cleansing, and just remembered I wanted to get more information about the infamous enzyme P450, which I suspect I lack (or is fairly lazy-assed in its detox duties). This morning I came across information regarding a Liver Detoxification Profile to assess how well the liver cleanses and dumps its load into the colon. Just what I was looking for. Oh praised be ye internet!

I so want this test. But then I’m the type of girl who actually WANTS a colonoscopy, because self-knowledge is hot. Luckily, this doesn’t involve anything slid up my ass or having to spoon out fresh stool from the toilet - it’s a simple saliva test. Now I just have to find a doctor…within spitting distance.

The premise: It’s a May-December romance between a senior number cruncher with very few social skills and a young woman who has just gotten out of jail. They meet in - guess - a cafe, and she tells him she’s a “student of sorts.” They share a few dates together and then he invites her on holiday for a weekend in Iceland, albeit to the prestigious - and apocryphal - G8 summit in Reykjavik.

Somehow, the film would have you believe a romance flowers from that. Yet I do not see any credible sparks fly between the two, regardless of the 30-year age difference. However, Bill Nighy does play a lonely, self-effacing bureaucrat quite well, and Kelly MacDonald is absolutely lovely to look at and listen to. As one YouTuber commented, “her [Scottish] accent is sexy as hell!”

Two elements I found that were quite disturbing: one, the lack of diplomacy Gina (MacDonald) possesses regarding her incessant need to speak her mind regardless of who it endangers, and two, the lack of a real ending.

Now, call me American, but I like a good Hollywood ending. I want the good to triumph over the evil and love to conquer all. However, good and love kind of left the building and went out for a spot of tea, because the movie just peters out. Maybe the lack of satisfaction was supposed to be artistic. However, it just left me to have to craft my own conclusion, complete with soaring orchestral fanfare and the comfort that poverty WOULD be eliminated shortly. And of course, the odd couple living happily ever after. That’s the ending I would have wanted, that would have justified Gina’s repeated verbal attacks upon the summit, no matter how well deserved.

Life is grand.

My adrenals are still dragging on a leash six feet behind me, but I’m hopeful that my new environment will kick some qi into them and give me a little more joie in my vivre. I’m happy to report that a gelateria people have been raving about here is actually pretty mediocre, so my weakness for authentic European gelato will not be tempted.

More as life progresses…

You have just described my life up to this point, I wanted to tell her. But I was too stunned. And sad. What if this is why weight loss is proving impossible? What if it’s congenital, that God forgot? I would interject that my dead grandmother has been visiting me lately, and I think it’s to apologize for our family’s crappy genetics, but I’ll save that for another post.

But I see this is my next step, to get tested to ascertain if indeed I am missing this enzyme. And if I am, what to do about it? I mean, is it something that can be subbed or replaced? Can I get one on Craigslist? I’d pay top dollar.

After this conversation, I did some googling of “P450″ and found more about this at Detox For Health, a website promoting The 20-Day Rejuvenation Diet. Here’s the excerpt on P450:

“The enzyme system in the liver is very delicate. Like the antioxidant system, it depends on having the right combination of an assortment of nutrients that is almost impossible to get without nutritional supplementation, even from a very healthy diet. The enzyme system is also subject to great genetic variation. Dr. Bland reports that when all the health-conscious members of his staff had their liver detoxification processes tested, they found a 10-fold difference in Phase One detoxification ability among these “normal” individuals. “In fact,” he writes, “individuals among the staff who had the slowest cytochrome P450 [i.e. the liver’s enzyme system] detoxification activity were the most sensitive, with histories of allergy, asthma and environmental sensitivity. On the other end of the continuum, those who had very active cytochrome P450 and liver detoxification systems appeared to be the staff members who never got sick when they traveled internationally, experienced no allergies to foods or other substances and had no eczema or asthma.”

So I’d like to know what to do should I be lacking this little helper dude, or if I have one and it’s just dragging its ass. The site stresses each person’s biochemical individuality, but then recommends a diet chock full of gluten. Increasing my intestinal inflammatory markers will not help my liver dump its load, nor will it make anyone with a sense of smell want to sleep with me. But I’d like to think there’s an answer for me, greater than diets of parsley and kale, or pumping my adrenals full of prescription drugs, or - god forbid - having to accept myself at 250 lbs. It’s not that I can’t sing and dance at this weight, but ferfocksake I’d like to click my heels, too. And not be treated as invisible or as a dartboard by a large portion of society. Especially if it’s all because of a freaking missing enzyme.

Hope. I must remember hope. And moving past injustice. Because right now I feel like punching something.

You might need a hankie for this one.

I’m writing because something happened recently that I’m still trying to wrap my mind around. Saturday night I went out to a casual party - a Scrabble party to be exact. When I got there, the host said that there was going to be music later on - two friends were going to play for us. I said, “Great.” The host knows I also play and asked me if I would tune a guitar she had lying around. I said okay and did it, perfectly comfortable to just listen and not be asked to play.

Well the scrabble games got underway and the goddess of good letters blessed me and I won the game. There were several other tables going, and after they finished, the musicians came out, sat on the couch and played a couple of songs.

Then one of the songwriters asked me to play a song. ::Gulp:: It had been years since I played in public, but I screwed up the courage and did it. I seemed to get quite a nice response, and they asked me to play another one. So I did. They wanted me to play another, but I flipped it back to the duo, and they sang another. We took a few more turns each, and then the evening ended. It felt so great, getting such lovely praise from people for my music. It had been a long time.

The next day, the host posted a note on the email list we’re all on, thanking the duo for sharing their music, how wonderful they were, such evocative harmonies, they’re ones to watch for, blah blah blah. She then listed the winners of the scrabble games and then the attendees, and of course I was on both lists. However, she said nothing about my music.

Two minutes later, I got a private email from her apologizing for this, saying, “If you want me to write an addendum, I will.”

It is this sentence that has sent a knife straight into my gut and left me in a tizzy the last few days. Why didn’t she just post a note to the list apologizing for forgetting me, that I also played? And if she felt she had to describe me, that I “didn’t suck?”

But she didn’t. She remembered I was there, she remembered I had won one of the scrabble games, but she didn’t remember I had shared some of my original songs with everyone.

By saying, “If you want me to, I will,” she put me in a very awkward position. If I said, “Yes, I would like you to post something,” then I put myself in the begging position, having to ask for what should have been unsolicited PR, or at least saying, “Yes I do not want you to discount me.” And if I say, “Nah, don’t bother,” then I discount myself.

In her passivity, she was asking if it was okay for her to forget me. She was asking to be absolved for not writing about/not caring for my music by making it seem like it was an oversight.

Ew.

To top it off, she did post an “addendum,” saying that she forgot to mention me, that I played ‘quite’ beautifully (why did she insert ‘quite’? I’ll never know.) and thanked me for alerting her of the oversight.

As if.

Of course, no one else would know of this drama just from reading these posts. I alone am the sole beneficiary of this woman’s schisms. I am trying to let it go. Lord knows I would love to send her an email complete with the dagger she shot my way. However, I am trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, which is not an easy task. Imagining her with a DSM-IV diagnosis helps.

And then I got a damning frontal headache. And then a vaccination scar on my left arm started to itch and itch and itch.

And later in the day, as I was heading to a meeting, I got an instant message from my colon that it was needing to make a special delivery. And so I made a left turn into the closest water closet, and sat. And sat. And sat, my gut cramping up and my ass growing more humiliated at why I was going to be late to the staff meeting, and what I would say if pressed.

Finally nature called, and before skulking out of the restroom, I turned and looked at my creation. It was a nice, well-formed log with bits of wild rice in it, which was odd because I haven’t eaten wild rice in over a month. And then I looked closer and saw that it wasn’t wild rice but an 11-piece mariachi band, whom I invited to my staff meeting and so never had to explain my tardiness.

And once at the meeting, my staff completely apologized to me for all the horrific scheduling errors they had made since I started working there. They got down on their knees and said how ashamed they were of their constant ineptitude, wailing that they were sorry they couldn’t give me anything more than butt-faced mediocrity.

And then the ghost of Timothy Leary appeared, winked at me, and I quit this crapfest of bureaucratic nincompoops job and moved to Phoenix.

Would more people try UT if increased their intuition or fantasy life?

Someday soon I’ll be up to a cup of U a day. Or more. For someone who has never taken ANY drugs of the recreational sort, ever - the glee with which I’m looking forward to hallucinogenic properties of drunken pee is, um, interesting. I think my urine is sending me back to freshman year of college. And this time, I’m enrolled at the U of Me.

I haven’t gotten up to drinking it straight, because of course, that’s the goal. Everyone should have goals, right? I’ve advanced past the “you’d-hardly-know-it’s-in-there” homeopathic dose, and this morning I gingerly put a finger in the collection jar and put a drop under my tongue.

There was no taste whatsoever, which is surprising because it certainly smelled like ammonia. In fact, after a few more drops I had this hit that it was amniotic fluid. Around the 4th month of pregnancy, amniotic fluid is basically composed of fetal urine. And I had this Wohhhh moment, like I was taking myself back in time, back to the beginning of me. And then I thought that there must be fetal LSD in this stuff because I was tripping myself out.

And then a few hours later, whilst blogging the previous post, a most unusual taste arose in my mouth. This singular taste was none other than that of Erythromycin, an orange-colored antibiotic my mom gave me for chronic ear infections when I was young. The taste was unbelievably strong, and I wondered if I was still carrying around its residue. I flashed on a class I’d taken at the Learning Annex years ago, where reknowned medical intuitive Caroline Sutherland had told me the root of my food and chemical sensitivities was all the antibiotics I’d taken in my youth. For indeed, antibiotics will damage the gut lining. Thankfully though, urine therapy claims it can heal it. (I’m just so lucky that way.) However, after 10 drops I started to get a headache right between the eyes, which urinophiles will tell you is a detox reaction. Um, yay?

Not long after my Erythromycin-spiked walk down memory lane, I hopped in the shower and unconsciously began singing. In fact, I didn’t realize what I was singing until I was belting out the chorus to 867-5309/Jenny.

Oh my gawd. Urine therapy is taking me back to high school. Now that’s repulsive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5gpSwiMWds

I had posted Joy Nash’s Fat Rant a while ago, a video that to date has gotten over 1.2 million views. Here she is again, valiantly defending her position on the horrific notion that fat people can be healthy, too!

Most memorable is the quote from compatriot Ms. Bliss, culled (at about 1:17) from the yammering on of the fat/fit debate:

“You cannot tell any more about a person’s healthy living lifestyle and actions by looking at their body size than you can tell how hard they work by looking at the balance in their bank account.”

Brilliant.

Judgmental toothpick MeMe Roth (the one in the middle), OTOH, gets a Manhattan raspberry and the Horror Diet Village Idiot award for her incessant harping, “But statistics say fat people are more likely to…” Blah blah blah.

Like all skinny people exercise regularly, never eat junk food, and never get heart attacks or strokes or diabetes.

Statistics say you’re too skinny to be a windbag but you’ve certainly disproved that.

So, whilst being treated for the adrenals with some Chinese herbs, I’m here to announce that I have finally gone off the deep end regarding weight loss. No, I’m not getting liposucked. Worse. I’m actually engaging in something I never thought I’d do, even had announced it in the ‘About’ section of this blog as something absolutely off-limits. And yet who knew that this particularly grotesque healing modality was excellent for slimming down?

Last week, all of a sudden, these two words bored a hole in my skull and said, “Hey. Think about this one.” And I’m like, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” And they went, “Nope.”

The two words? Urine therapy.

Oh, yes. And not just drinking it, either. Using it as a salve for insect bites. Bathing in it to cure psoriasis. Inserted as an enema for constipation relief. Apparently, pee - not water - is the universal solvent.

After all, urine contains antibodies, good bacteria, amino acids, enzymes…and people in India have been using it for 2,000 years to maintain good health. Of course, I’m not sure how they justify drinking the ammonia, heavy metals, formaldehyde, etc. that’s also in pee.

So I spent a good week retching at the thought. Blehhhhh. Then I found out the local naturopathic college actually TEACHES A COURSE in urine therapy. Then I found a recipe for homeopathic urine, essentially a VERY DILUTED dose…one drop shaken up in a glass of water, and thought that I MIGHT be able to do this.

Now, before you question just exactly where I went off the deep end and why, know this. There are people I’ve been talking to - on urine therapy lists, of course - who say it has cured their IBS, their constipation, their fungal toenails, their diabetes, heart problems, hair loss, skin rashes, candidiasis, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, fibromyalgia - problems that western medicine often has no workable answers for.

Three days ago, I put a drop of urine in some water and succused it (i.e., shook it really hard) and then took a drop of that mixture and put it in another glass, added water and shook that one up. And then I drank it.

And you know what, people? It tasted like WATER.

And not long after, I pooped out a bowel movement to be proud of. I can see how this actually would be good for constipation. I tried it again yesterday, but I started to feel nauseous before drinking it, and so couldn’t tell if the abdominal discomfort I was feeling was from the urine or from the sinking feeling that I had stooped to drinking my own urine. Again.

I am advised by regular pee drinkers that I should work up to drinking it straight, and there is just no way that is ever going to happen. Perhaps I could put a full glass in a smoothie, but I would really have to apologize to the fruit. And then to my stomach lining, which would be puked up all over the toilet.

And yet. Freakily encouraged by one person’s tale of curing his fungal toenails with a 3-day boot soak in ‘water from his own well,’ I bought a pair of rubber farming boots at a feed store today for $15 and poured a week’s worth of urine in them. I am now sitting at my computer, my feet sloshing around in boots full of pee. I write a post-it note: Do not kneel down. For ANY reason.

And now, a rarity. A picture of me.

I’m in boots, urine boots…

And here, folks, is the BEFORE picture.

Fungalicious

NOW you see why I called this blog the HORROR diet. It’s a horror feast for the eyes! But seriously, as a healthcare practitioner, I’ve seen lots of fugly toes. The fact that I’m willing to sit here in boots full of urine to take care of them says something, doesn’t it? I am doing this FOR AMERICA, people! I am doing this for all the people out there with fungly toenails who wear closed-toed shoes in summer, who never take their socks off in public, who wince at a day at the beach, who envy all those people who can wear their flip flops or Birkenstocks with pride. I am here to show you, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, WE WILL NOT BE SOFT ON FUNGUS!!!

I guess you could say I’m using this as a litmus test. If the toes heal nicely with these golden yellow baths, then I might address weight loss with it. But somehow I’d venture to guess that the toes won’t heal without a few hundred gulps of pee, straightaway. And that is just too nauseating for my wee self to think about right now.