Balance Is Most Important

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” — Albert Einstein

I have never been a balanced human being, always struggling with extremism. I exercise too much. I work too hard. I eat too healthy. I take too many supplements. I focus too intently for too long. I’m too serious, and I don’t let myself have as much fun like I used to have when I was wild and young. At 52 years old, balance is suddenly on my radar. It’s the ingredient that’s been missing all these years, and it’s the key to my future and happiness in the next Act of Wendy’s Life. I kind-of miss the Wendy that used to grab a beer and party with the locals in my Cameroonian village. I miss that spunk!

Before I was writing these posts weekly, I was writing them sporadically. It went something like this…after months of not writing anything, I’d wake up with an idea, an epiphany, divine inspiration, or whatever you want to call it. This burst of mental energy then propelled me to write up an essay and publish it. There was no rhyme or reason or warning. It was like a tornado or hurricane swept through my life. Now my writing is a discipline. I have to come up with an idea and write something whether I feel like it or not. It’s a whole new thing for me since I started in November.

Several posts back, you know that I was in the hospital for swollen lymph nodes on the right side of my neck. Those nodes are still swollen. I had a biopsy early this month, and they have labeled it as a self-limiting benign histiocytic necrotizing lymphadenitis pattern that can be caused by a whole bunch of different viruses, bacteria, autoimmune diseases, etc. They call it Kikuchi disease, and my doctors are still trying to figure out the cause. It’s very very rare! I don’t fit the typical profile, as a young woman or child, and the doctors don’t know much about it. I am probably the only person they’ve ever encountered with this issue.

The first thing my rheumatologist said was “Interesting!” And she’s running a bunch more tests. She’s Nigerian, and I lived in her neighboring country of Cameroon for several years, so she knows something about all the weird diseases down there that may have gone dormant in my system some thirty years ago. Perhaps the Covid I had in February ushered something out of hiding, but only time will tell. I remember one friend of mine who had worms crawling under her skin. She got it from chopping wood. I took a photo because I wanted to help figure out what it was and cure her.

When I joined the Peace Corps in Cameroon—thanks to JFK—they put us through a three-month training and gave us these big blue medical kits and a book called Where There is No Doctor. You get the idea. I got some weird germs in Cameroon, and learned a lot from that book, but the doctors were great in getting my issues resolved. The problem is I lived pretty darn far from any modern hospital or health center. I worked in a very rural Centre de Santé in a little town called Songkolong, where certain people had the power to turn themselves into animals!

Trying to be my own doctor again now, I started dissecting my latest disease by first understanding the words used in the pathology report.

Histiocytic, from the National Cancer Institute… (HIS-tee-oh-sy-TOH-sis) A group of rare disorders in which too many histiocytes (a type of white blood cell) build up in certain tissues and organs, including the skin, bones, spleen, liver, lungs, and lymph nodes. This can cause damage to tissue or tumors to form in one or more parts of the body.

Necrotizing, from John Hopkins Medicine… The word necrotizing comes from the Greek word “nekros”, which means “corpse” or “dead”. A necrotizing infection causes patches of tissue to die. These infections are the result of bacteria invading the skin or the tissues under the skin. If untreated, they can cause death in a matter of hours.

Holy smokes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Needless to say, I haven’t been overly focused on financial markets or geopolitical happenings. My attention last week has been on fixing my body, something I can control, unlike the state of the world. It’s funny how quickly our perspective changes when our attention shifts. Certain things that I thought were so important before are no longer relevant to me right now. I haven’t figured out the connection yet, but Albert Einstein keeps coming up in my reading and study. Maybe next week I’ll figure him out and write up that connection, which started with a lecture I heard by Douglas Hofstadter.

I’m kind-of intrigued by this Kikuchi disease. I have felt a bump that comes and goes on the side of my neck for a long time now. I always thought it was a muscle knot because it came on with tension from having bad posture at the computer or sleeping weirdly. My first memory of feeling this bump was when I was in middle school, believe it or not. I was in 7th grade band practice. Only recently, when I had neck pain and two bumps, did a chiropractor tell me they weren’t muscle knots, but lymph nodes, and that I should speak with my GP if they didn’t go away.

We know that Covid and the vaccines mess with your immune system. I’ve had issues with pain for decades, loosely described as an undefined connective tissue disorder, so it could be that I have an underlying autoimmune issue which was exacerbated by the Covid virus. But I also learned recently that a copper deficiency can bring on autoimmune disease, and all kinds of other diseases. In our modern age, we pop supplements to deal with certain medical issues. Low on energy? Take this! Vision problems? Take that! It was getting to the point where I was taking handfuls of vitamins, herbs, and probiotics every single day for all my different ailments.

I am not a doctor, but I like to learn, and I’m going to tell you what I’ve been thinking after doing some learning recently. First, some background info. There’s PubMed research, which suggests that Covid harms your microbiome. It kills some critical bacteria that you need for the production of short-chain fatty acids that fire all kinds of regulatory processes in your body. When things get dysregulated, you get the long list of Long-Covid symptoms. Also, when you take what I was taking to prevent and treat Covid, you get dysregulated.

After listening to a podcast featuring Morley Robbins, reading Toxic Iron and Ferroxidase, the Master Antioxidant and studying the Root Cause Protocol (RCP), I learned that supplementing too many vitamins and minerals like B, C, D3, Zinc, etc. creates dysregulation between iron, magnesium and copper. More is not always better, and this dysregulation causes problems with your mitochondria. The key to restoring your health is balancing magnesium, copper, and iron in your body again. Imbalances cause inflammation, oxidative stress, and cellular dysfunction, which leads to sickness and disease.

Before I decide what exactly I’m going to do, I’ve requested a book from my library: [Cu]re : your fatigue: how balancing 3 minerals and 1 protein is the solution that you’re looking for / Morley M. Robbins. His RCP Protocol has a large international following. The gist is it’s not a matter of popping another pill. It requires lifestyle changes that feature getting balanced again. Since balance has been a recent theme in my life, I take this happenstance seriously. While I’m not certain, I highly suspect that “balance” is the way back to health. It is NOT a quick fix, but it makes good sense to me and is worth a try.

Over the past six months, I suppose I’ve been on a journey to relearn balance. First, with my posture: natural alignment to eliminate pain. I fixed my computer station and I make a conscious effort to sit, stand, and walk with my bones aligned the natural way. This has relaxed my musculature a lot. Second, with my blogging—being disciplined to write something every week, regardless of how I’m feeling, has been good for me. And now with my health, getting my microbiome and minerals balanced again is important for a long life. It’s an ongoing process, and I have a long way to go. Thankfully, this constant “moving” (as Einstein put it), and learning, is fun.

My blog posts are published every Sunday, and they’re free for anyone to read and share. If you would like to support me financially in this weekly process of thinking and writing, I’d be most grateful. For this reason, I started a Wendy Williamson Patreon page. If Patreon isn’t your thing, you can send a one-time gift via Paypal to me@wendywilliamson.com. Thank you!

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