Swedish Pot Roast

1 large onion, chopped
1 tblsp fat of your choice
1 tblsp grated fresh ginger
1/4 cup boiled cider
1/2 cup vermouth
1/2 teasp cinnamon
1/2 teasp cardoman
fresh grated nutmeg
1 bay leaf
Beef chuck roast, sprinkled with salt

Brown the meat and onions in the fat.  Add ginger, then boiled cider and vermouth.  Add spices then chuck roast.  Pressure cook for 20 minutes, then let cool slowly. 

Primal Meyer Lemon Pudding cake

This recipe is a modification of: http://www.foodess.com/2013/01/lemon-pudding-cake/

3 Meyer lemons, grated for zest and then squeezed for juice
3 eggs, separated
1 tblsp butter or coconut oil, melted
1/4 cup honey
3 tblsp coconut flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup milk, half and half, or coconut milk

Preheat oven to 325 and grease a 8 inch square or round pan with butter or coconut oil.  Find a larger pan and start water heating for a boiling water bath.  Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks.  Beat the egg yolks in a separate bowl until the color lightens and they have incorporated significant air.  Beat in the melted butter.  Beat in the honey, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.  Beat in the coconut flour and baking soda.  Beat in the milk.  Gently but thoroughly stir in the beaten egg whites.  Pour into the greased pan, set in the larger pan and pour in the boiling water, and carefully place in the oven.  Bake for 50 minutes or until the top is set.

I don't usually notice a coconut taste from coconut flour, but I did in this case.  So don't be afraid to use coconut milk so long as a meyer lemon - coconut pudding cake sounds good to you.  The next time I try it I will increase the coconut flour even a little more--this had a very thin cake layer.

Anesthesia

I just found a useful link for Parkinson's and anesthesia:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3141145/

I'm also going to copy here the information I compiled a couple of years ago for Alzspouse:

The idea that general anesthesia can accelerate Alzheimers is getting close to being accepted scientific knowledge. I haven't seen the full text of the articles, but the reference I would give a doctor is: http://www.j-alz.com/issues/22/anesthesia.html

From my research I compiled a list to show the doctor:

• Least safe: isoflurane and halothane
• Possibly not as bad: sevoflurane is better in some respects, desflurane better still
• Even safer: Thiopental, diazepam, and propofol (though this last showed negative effects at high concentrations)--but be careful because these are often used before something else or for deep sedation, not as general anesthesia by themselves.
• IV anesthesia is generally safer than inhaled (because it is larger molecules)
• Glycopyrrolate, an anticholinergic drug which does not cross blood-brain barrier, is preferable to scopolamine or atropine.

One place to start if you want to do your own research is: Anesth Analg. 2009 May;108(5):1627-30. Consensus statement: First International Workshop on Anesthetics and Alzheimer's disease. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769511/?tool=pubmed

My husband was given sevoflurane, propofol, lidocaine and Fentanyl, as well as Zofran for nausea. The nurse-anesthetist assured me she gave him as little as possible to keep him under, for as short a time as possible. That he was doing so well the day afterwards makes me understand more fully that there are two issues here. How deep and how long the anesthesia is has a big effect, irrespective of the medication used. But I'm convinced by what I've read that which medication is given is also signficant.

I have since done some research specific to Multiple System Atrophy.  There is an anesthesia data book available on Google books: Anaesthesia Databook: A Perioperative and Peripartum Manual By Rosemary Mason. It won't let me cut and paste information but it lists the following risks from MSA:

1. cardiovascular instability
2. impaired pulmonary respiratory reflexes
3. defective reflexes of the pupils, which are used to monitor the depth of anesthesia
4. lack of response to ephedrine and similar medications
5. bilateral vocal cord paralysis

ADHD and Parkinson's

I have a husband with Parkinson’s and a 20 year old son with similar executive function issues but no symptoms of Parkinson’s. Both also have extremely poor sense of smell and problems with constipation.  I keep looking for some connection that would explain both of their issues

My husband was diagnosed in 2008 with Atypical Parkinson’s/Lewy Body Dementia (both started at about the same time but the physical issues are progressing faster than the mental).  There is a study in which 48% of people with LBD had symptoms of ADHD in their youth, compared to 15% of the control and 15% of the group with Alzheimer's.  This is an issue I am interested in as the transition from my husband’s lifelong cognitive pattern, which we understood as a variant of Attention Deficit Disorder, to Atypical Parkinson's was so gradual and so much just more of the same.  Now it is further complicated because my husband's diagnosis was changed in 2012 from Lewy Body Dementia to Multiple System Atrophy, a different form of Atypical Parkinson's.

Our son has similar ADHD with particularly significant executive function issues and shows so much the same pattern as my husband.  Dr. Kenneth Bergmann originally evaluated John at Medical University of South Carolina. He looked at John’s initial neuropsych report and said “that’s not normal, that’s not even normal Parkinson’s” to have a verbal IQ 37 points higher than performance IQ. He saw that as one of several clear signs that John was on the path to Lewy Body Dementia.  But a year later our son Paul had a learning disability evaluation before he started college, and his verbal IQ tested 26 points higher than his performance IQ.  We kept saying that to Dr. Bergman  (who has since moved away to Washington) and he kept saying that it was just that John must have had mild DLB symptoms going back many years. That’s the standard answer I get from researchers on DLB. But it doesn’t fit my experience--John has always been this way, it just got worse.

I have found two genetic illnesses that involve ADHD when young and Parkinson's when older--subclinical Fragile X and Gaucher's disease carriers.  Fragile X would not link father and son and my son has been tested and does not have a high number of repeats.  My husband has been tested and does not have the most common genetic defect leading to Gaucher's, but there is research showing its link to Parkinson's and LBD.

Squash soup

2 oz cashews
1 cup cooked winter squash or pumpkin
1 cup applesauce
2 cups turkey or chicken stock
1 tblsp curry powder
1/2 teasp nutmeg
pinch of cinnamon
splash of heavy cream

Chop cashews in the blender, then add all ingredients except cream and blend.  Pour into pan and heat to just boiling.  Stir in cream and serve.

Getting creative with Photoshop

I made these images from photographs using this tutorial plus instructions from Cafepress about how to create transparent backgrounds.

They are available on T shirts and whatever at: http://www.cafepress.com/sk/pm1

A year later

I think a year ago I probably was at my maximum weight.  I don't weigh myself, in fact I usually don't even look at my weight when I am weighed at the doctor's office.  But we waited nearly half an hour at the gym before we could swim last Thursday, and I took the opportunity to weigh myself.  A doctor might not be happy with my weight--184--but I am.  My guess is that I have lost 30 pounds in the last year.  Photos are from June 2011 and November 2012.

 























A year and a half ago I decided to try taking Metformin, hoping to improve my diabetes control a little more and hoping it might help me with my pattern of post-menopausal weight gain.  I kept increasing the dose, because I felt it wasn't doing anything.  I went up to 1000 mg twice a day, and thought maybe that was helping.  Then I got something like the flu, though my flu test was negative, and lost a clothing size in a week of being mostly too sick to eat.  After that we spent all of Christmas vacation cooking, but my clothing size didn't go back up.  It was in mid January that I started following the Primal way of eating.  I think I went down another clothing size in a month, and after that I have been very very slowly losing inches (as judged by how my clothes fit).  A few weeks ago I switched my pants down another size (luckily I kept a lot--I have one more size in the attic).

I went off the Metformin last summer when I learned that my A1c was 5.8--exactly what it was before I started the Metformin.  So I don't think I am eating particularly lower carb than I was; the difference is that I very rarely eat anything made with grains or refined sugar.  I eat large meals--I am not careful how much I eat--but I have given up snacking except for a bedtime snack.  I also started supplementing with iodine and over the course of the spring and summer I worked my way up to 25 mg., which I think has given me more energy.  Having more energy makes me happy! I'm doing pretty much the same exercise--swimming twice a week, some walking and gardening.

I'm very glad to have found what works for me.