Archives for July 2006

It’s day 7 since Kerry and I started our 10 day detox based on what we learnt during the final day at the Tony Robbins UPW event. The program is pretty straight forward:

1. Vital breathing – simple breathing exercises
2. Living waters and live food – plenty of water, fruits & vegetables
3. Aerobic power – moderate exercise sustained over a period of time
4. Maximum nourishment – low sugar, acid, and predominately live foods and quality oils
5. Structural support – get some rest, sun and a massage
6. A directed mind – create joy, reduce stress
7. Eliminate processed fats – but get your essential fatty acids
8. Eliminate animal flesh – enough said
9. Eliminate diary products – cow’s don’t drink milk, why should you
10. Eliminate acid additions – sugar, vinegar, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine & drugs

A number of the guys I work with at Kaboodle are Indian and as I described the diet over lunch last week (most are vegetarian, very handy) they explained it sounded very similar to cleansing diets prescribed by Ayurvedic doctors back home. Strange thing was, just that morning on the way into work I was listening to an interview with Depak Chopra by Tony Robbins and low-and-behold if it wasn’t about, in part, Ayurveda.

Anyhow, so far it’s going well, after having rarely eaten vegetables for the first 35 years of my life I’m now making up for lost time. Once I un-linked being a hardened carnivore from my Identity  I’ve found I quite like vegetables…my mum would be proud! I’ve had no ill effects, a couple of days I’ve had a heavy head but no loss of energy. Kerry and I have been walking for 40 minutes or so in the morning, drinking freshly juiced vegetables and drinking lots of water. I’ve found my skin less dry, I’ve lost 6lbs and an inch off my waist (not that I was particularly overweight, but I had gained a few lbs/inches the last couple of years)…not to shabby.

My bald spot has gone!

As you can see from the before and after pictures my hair has grown back and I no longer have a bald spot on the back of my head, just the usual gray hairs. I guess it was caused by a combination of being in the hospital bed, medication, stress and who knows what else.

I didn’t have to do anything special for it to grow back, other than not get stressed about it and I guess it took about 6 weeks to recover. A friend of mine (who’s a hairdresser) thought it might have been Alopecia, from the way it’s described this certainly seems possible, I’m just glad it’s back to normal.

NOTE: Thanks to Lori for pointing me to info on Telogen Effluvium, seems to be a close match to what I experienced.

For those of you that know me you’ll find this hard to believe…but I’m going to become a vegetarian, yes, yes, I can hear the laughter already thank you. For those that don’t know me I’m about as far from being a vegetarian as you can get, I’ll literally pick the meat out of a dish or eat around the vegetables on my plate, my only concession is I don’t mind salad, but cooked vegetables are a no no.

So what’s prompted the change I hear you ask, well it’s all the fault of that Tony Robbins guy. On the last day of the UPW event Joseph McClendon III, a close friend of Tony’s, took us through "Living Healthy", which consisted of Joseph intermixed with Tony on video.

Basically they laid out "The Ten Fundamentals Of Living Health" and as you have probably guessed, number 8 is eliminate animal flesh and number 9 is eliminate milk, cheese, and all diary products. Now if it wasn’t for the fact that Tony and Joseph exhibit more energy and vitality than you can imagine I’d have dismissed it, but instead I’m going to accept their 10 day challenge and not just follow a vegetarian diet but a vegan one!

I’ll see how it goes and after that I’ll decide if I’m to remain a vegetarian or perhaps even a vegan…I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Due to the electrical burns on my right leg and the skin grafts on my right and left legs my plastic surgeon recommended I wear Jobst compression garments to help reduce scarring and help prevent hypertrophic scarring, and for my stump to help reduce the edema (swelling).

When he first suggested the jobst garments I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it didn’t sound too bad for a short period of time. When I asked him how long I’d need to wear them for he said a year, oh and it works best if I wear them 24 hours a day!

Now that didn’t sound like fun to me. Where we live in Northern California it can get pretty warm during the summer months, temperatures over 100F aren’t uncommon…wearing the equivalent of a pair of thermal tights through the summer didn’t seem like it was going to be too comfortable.

Anyhow I went and got fitted for the garments and about 2 weeks later the first set arrived and I got to try them on. It’s like putting on a pair of thick lycra tights and they use special gloves (they look like very thick washing up gloves) to help pull them up because the material is quite shear and slippery. My leg garments are crotchless (very sexy) and I wear my underpants over the top, just like superman.

I now have two pairs of garments for both my legs and arm and whilst I wasn’t too sure at first, it makes an incredible difference to my wounds. I only wear the leg garment during the day and don’t sleep in it, but they have really helped flatten the skin grafts and reduce scarring, so I intend to keep wearing them for the year as instructed. The arm garment (or “stump shrinker”) I wear pretty much 24 hours a day and it helps reduce the edema, flatten the scarring and also provides some protection for my stump.

As you can see from the before and after shots, these garments really do work. I also have a twice daily ritual (morning/night) that I go through to help with the healing. I use vitamin E oil around the scarring on my stump and I use a coco butter-based hand and body lotion on my skin grafts. After this has been absorbed I use Mederma, which was recommended to me by my physiotherapist, it’s a silicone-based solution. Silicone has been shown to help reduce keloids and hypertrophic scarring.