Grandmabetsybell

No Magic Pill to end Arthritis Pain

Gentle Reader,

In the end, and in the beginning, there is only one thing we –you and I– can do to bring lasting health to our aching bodies. Life style change. As I travel the Alaska Marine Highway, eat in the cafeteria on board, snack along the wharf in the various Inside Passage towns, I struggle with how to maintain my eating habits with poor choices everywhere. Some people go on vacation and throw their healthy life-style to the winds for those 7 – 21 days. Unfortunately the stomach doesn’t know you are on vacation and when the deep fried foods, extra sour dough bread with butter come rolling down the intestinal track, the joints react.

I’ve been having a few digestive and joint issues until yesterday when I found an IGA in Skagway with a ripe peach, some snap peas, and carrots. Amazing how getting back to the healthy routine will quickly restore one to their mobile less-pained body. Did I mention I also found a 4 mile round trip hike up to Dewey Lake right out of Skagway on 2nd Ave?

So good to move after strolling. What a difference.

This article about the new weight loss drug Dexaprine came across my desk. Dr. Chaney talks about the hazards of relying on a magic pill to take care of the pounds that weigh our joints down. It simply doesn’t work. Read his whole article here.

Want to really make a difference in your health? Lose 10 pounds. Safely. Let the fat go, keep the lean muscle. Have the energy to work out, or a least begin a walking program. Change the way you eat, permanently. That’s what the 180 Turnaround kit and the Lean and Healthy Kit are all about. Consider these Shaklee products as a way to launch yourself into a permanent life-style change. Personally, I’ll be drinking –or pouring over my breakfast cereal–a Shaklee 180 smoothee for the rest of my life, just as I have been doing ever since I achieved my goal weight 25 years ago with the Shaklee shakes and vitamins. Why not? Excellent science behind the product. Delicious. Sustains energy all day. Convenient to use (I have packets with me on this trip.) Cheaper than the fast food items at Starbuck’s or McDonalds. Begin today.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving,

Betsy

PS to catch the latest on the Alaska expedition, click here

PPS Leave me your diet success/struggle stories in the comment section.

Another Diet Pill Bites the Dust

Everyone is looking for an easy way to lose weight.

Let’s face it. Losing weight is difficult. You have to give up your favorite foods. You’re often hungry and cranky. You have to change your lifestyle. And did I mention that you might need to put on your running shoes and go for a run or, heaven forbid, actually go to the gym. It’s so much easier to take one of those diet pills. You know the ones I’m talking about. They promise to give you energy – burn the fat – suppress your appetite. All you need to do is take one of those little pills every day and, voila, you’re ready to try on that bikini.

But are those diet pills really safe? Lots of diet pills have come and gone over the years. Some have just faded away because they didn’t work. They didn’t live up to their claims. Others have been withdrawn from the market by regulatory agencies because they were dangerous or actually killed people- Ma huang and Fen-Phen come to mind, but there have been many others.

And now it looks like yet another diet pill, one called Dexaprine, may have the same fate. The ads make it sound like a wonder pill……

“With one little change…you could feel energy all day long”

“With one little change…you can suppress your insatiable appetite”

“You can try another unsuccessful diet without it, but when you’re ready…the ultimate fat burner will be waiting for you with open arms.”

And yet, like most diet pills, it also has a dark side. Side effects include insomnia, sweating, heart palpitations and high blood pressure. As if that weren’t bad enough, the supplement manufacturer that makes Dexaprine conducts no clinical studies on their products, so they have no idea whether their product is safe or not. And, it appears that it may not be safe. Dutch authorities banned Dexaprine a few days ago after reports of 11 adverse reactions associated with Dexaprine use in Holland since March of this year, including hospitalizations and severe heart problems. British authorizes followed suit the next day and issued a warning against use of “fat burner” supplements in general. It’s probably just a matter of time before other governments step in and ban Dexaprine as well.

And, it’s not just Dexaprine. New diet pills hit the market almost every day. And, they all have those same “magical” claims.

It reminds me of the wise advice that a physician colleague of mine gave to the UNC medical students near the start of their first year. He told them “The only safe drug is a new drug”. He went on to say that he didn’t mean that new drugs were safer than the older drugs. It’s just that we don’t know all of their bad side effects until they’ve been on the market for a few years.

Too many promises, so few results with weight loss magic pills

Diets pills are no different. They burst on the market full of promise. But, once they’ve been on the market for a year or two, reports of their bad side effects start to appear. We start to learn just how dangerous they are. And, one by one, they all bite the dust.

The Bottom Line

1) There is no “Tooth Fairy”. There is no “Easter Bunny”. And, there is no magical pill that will SAFELY melt the pounds away. You simply don’t want to risk the diet pill solution – no matter how easy it sounds. No magical, “quick fix” diet solution is worth permanent heart damage – or worse.

2) If you are fortunate to lose weight safely using one of those diet pills, you won’t have learned anything. You won’t have changed anything. The weight will come right back on.

3) Permanent weight loss requires a permanent change to your lifestyle. Some of those changes will be difficult at first, but once those lifestyle changes become habits – once they become part of who you are, they will become easy.

You can achieve both the weight and the health you want!

To Your Health! Dr. Stephen G Chaney

Alaska, here we come

Gentle Reader,

My sister-in-law, Joan Bell, arrived last Wed. just as I was cleaning the paint residue from the back garden and deck. We were Alaska-bound and she had the excited energy that quivered, “Alaska, here we come.” Of course, I had a few more things to do to be ready for our Friday morning departure. We got away by 9:30 on the 16th, heading north in the Shaklee car, my 2002 Prius. Two stops along the way included the return of an air purifier to a customer after getting it fully functional once again, and a lovely lunch stop with the Schleh family in Mt. Vernon. All three grandchildren were there, a rare opportunity. Young adults are hard to gather in a clump. They were between fairs. Daniel and Ian proudly showed me their belt buckles, winnings for showmanship in the Skagit County Fair. By now they have hauled into the Monroe Washington State Fair with Boar goats, Saanen goats and Highlander cows. This will be the first year in many that I will not watch them parade their animals around the ring.

Tents on the stern of the Columbia — Young travelers to Alaska bring their own state-rooms.

Over tuna salad, Joan Schleh, my step-daughter, regaled us with her tales of jumping on a ferry for Ketchikan, fresh out of high-school, back-pack laden and ready for work in the canneries. She had heard the call: Alaska, here we come, figuring she could make money as well as the Filipino women who were working the line. Without a map or a number to call, she got off the boat after 36 hours of sleeping on the deck and sharing pot luck with other campers. Unable to locate the friend-of-a-friend, she boldly caught a ride to where there was work and signed on. Two weeks later, she’d called home and discovered there was a job waiting for her in Washington, DC and she caught the next ferry home to try her luck on the other side of the country. It was just as well. No place to stay at the cannery, the foreman had cleared a shelf and indicated the space was her’s for the sleeping. Joan’s children listened to their mother’s adventure, rapt with attention.

Columbia ferry lifebouy with Bellingham in the distance — Bellingham, WA from deck of the Columbia

We departed from Bellingham, the starting point of the Alaska Marine Highway. My great friend and sponsor in Shaklee lives in B’ham where she has become a well-known ceramic artist. We stopped by a gallery featuring her work on our way to the ferry. The Columbia is the biggest boat in the 11 boat fleet. About half the crew got off with us in Ketchikan having worked a week, traveling up to Juneau and then back down to Bellingham, thence home.

In stark contrast to Joan Schleh, Joan Bell and I enjoyed a cabin with bunk beds and a bathroom with shower, money enough to eat in the dining room after drinks in the luxurious bar. The inside passage proved to be as intimate an encounter with wild shoreline, leaping Orca whales, porpoise, harbor seals and eagles as advertised. While we are disappointed that the uncharacteristic cloudless days of July are gone in this early Fall, the mist and fog drape the low-rise islands with seductive vails, layering green on green, reaching higher and higher into the cloud cover. Armed with rain pants and umbrellas, we are loving the cloud-play and ever-changing weather.

View from the cabin Joan and I rented for4 nights. — Intimate harbor in front of Christmas House B&B in Ketchikan AK

Here in Ketchikan, we are tucked into an old 1940s cabin on stilts with high-tide water under the floor boards, an old propane burner in the center of the patterned linoleum floor. Our windows look out onto an intimate harbor complete with eagle, heron and king-fisher. Both of us have slipped into memories of cabins in Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire and Oklahoma from our childhood family vacation days. We have 4 nights here and will not run out of things to do or places to visit. Just today we spent several hours at the end of the road going north where its turnaround is just beyond a well-kept state park. Various civic groups helped construct one of the safest, most extravagantly beautiful stair-filled hiking trails I have walked. The deep sun-dappled rain forest floor covering is a Bigalow carpet of moss and tiny golden mushrooms. Moss drips from the prickly branches of the Sitka spruce. Brilliant red berries hang from elderberry shrubs and light the path from the centers of bunch-berry dogwood. Salmon swell the swollen river plummeting down from the steep hill that characterizes these Inside Passage islands.

We spent the late afternoon at the fish hatchery at the extreme south end of the Tongass highway watching black bears feed on salmon, along side flocks of argumentative seagulls. Even though three enormous and grotesquely out-of-place cruise ships dock in Ketchikan every Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, the streets and coffee houses are not overly crowded. I’m not sure where all the people go. Perhaps they are swallowed up in the various tours offered by entrepreneurial guiding services.

My step-son, who fished further north during his high school and college days, scoffed that Ketchikan was worth 4 hours at most. Certainly not 4 days. We are content to gaze out our window, sleep late, cook local sea food, read and read some more in between long wandering visits to the magnificent parks and trails our rental car takes us to. Four days will be perfect.

In spite of old bones, creaky knees and complaining hips, we are both moving comfortably helped by Pain Relief Complex and, in my case, a long session on the cabin floor to get things oiled up and moving. That is the main remedy after all, moving.

Let me know if you have ever answered the call, Alaska, here we come.

Be well, Do well and Keep moving yourself. And pass this along to your friends.

Betsy

206 933 1889

Confessions of an arthritic painting contractor

Gentle Reader,

Confessions of an arthritic painting contractor:

Taking down paintings, emptying book shelves, moving furniture, rolling up rugs, pulling up old wall-to-wall carpet, removing electric face-plates and then spackling, sanding, taping, and painting every wall that faces the outside is a sure-fire recipe for arthritic flare-ups of major proportion. No matter how many times I lay down on the floor and hung my knees over the Back2Life machine; no matter how many of Shaklee’s herbal Pain Relief Complex tablets I took, I could not prevent pain from coming on.

The people I was supervising as general painting contractor were:

Carsten Rossen and Jack Dahlstrom, 14 and 16, grandsons who did major lifting and prep work and even some priming.

Hanna Rossen and Ben Killorin, 17 and 19, grandchildren who turned out to be excellent painters and were able to mask, spackle, sand, edge and roll paint with only a few drips here and there. They each put in hours of time, their music blasting, bags of gorp and dried mangos, enormous sandwiches and Shaklee Performance drink for rehydration consumed. Ben made the sandwiches as his first summer job was the Deli department at a local grocery store.

Elizabeth Skewis, friend of Grace, my oldest daughter, and now a great friend of mine, is a woman who has done everything under the sun for a living including painting. She was my right hand gal, with skill and stick-to-itiveness, esthetic judgment and coaching for me and the teenagers.

Pete Rossen and Hanna, father and daughter, came to move the furniture back where it belonged after the final (almost final) painting was done. He was the one who suggested I could hire my grandchildren when I was fretting about whom to get to do the painting. I loved their youthful energy in the house and their “there, there, Grandma. Don’t lift anything. Just tell us and we’ll do it.”

Mike Walker, my renter who lives down stairs and is a finish carpenter. He put all the running toe board back in every room with his power tools.

The problem child in this final stage of the energy upgrade was, you guessed it, ME. I love hard work and couldn’t stop myself from all the above mentioned tasks. I did stop lifting.

Two observations that may help you who suffer from arthritis when you are over-active.

1. Don’t stop moving. In the middle of this ordeal I took a 3 ½ mile neighborhood walk which included a long downhill, then a beach walk and finally a 190 tread staircase and 4 long blocks uphill. Moving keeps the nutrients flowing to the joints which are poorly nourished. Without good nutrition, the crumbling joint cannot heal itself. Which brings me to the second point:

2. The cells in our joints are constantly repairing and rebuilding new, healthy cells to replace the worn out ones and to solve the problems of collapsing vertebrae. Peggy Cappy talks about this in her meditative CD “Healing Back Pain” which I listen to nearly every day. Wednesday, after hiking 9 miles round trip, 2000+ ft elevation gain, on Mt. Rainier’s east side to Summerland alpine meadow, I stopped for the evening with one of my hiking buddies. Her husband is a neurologist with Group Health here in Seattle. In our conversation he stated that these broken down joint cells do get replaced with fresh, healthy new cells that attempt to fix the problems. He has told me many times to keep moving, no matter what. Find something to do that doesn’t hurt and keep doing it.

Today, I spent the morning hanging pictures and scrubbing pain spots off the hard wood floors. I have no pain.

You can build healthy joints, but you must keep moving to help your body accomplish that feat.

The house is beautiful. It was all worth it. Here’s a video I put together to show the energy upgrade work that was done. When you see the space age water heater, you’ll appreciate the remark made by the city inspector when he came to sign off on the stepped-up electrical power,

“Wow. This thing should be in the living room where you can sit with your friends, smoke a joint and watch it.”

Whoa!

May I offer a further explanation of the energy improvements under the new roof. The Crown Roofing guys took off the old stuff including the particle board and before they put the new base and shingles on, the Vesta Performance guys laid down rigid insulation covered by a thin layer of reflective material which would further divert summer heat from entering the house. They also installed a fan system circulating air in the summer and avoiding mold build-up from a poorly ventilated crawl space over the ceiling and under the roof. I desperately needed a new roof and was able to fold the cost of the roof itself into the energy upgrade low-interest loan from the Puget Sound Community Credit Union. This banking institution works with the city of Seattle to implement the Community Power Works program for the homeowner who wants to lower their carbon foot print. A new roof by itself may or may not reduce heat loss from your house.

You are welcome to drop by and tour the garage and I’ll offer you a cold drink of some sort, but mostly you won’t notice anything different about the house. It does look fresh and clean but I didn’t change the colors or the furniture. If you are a person who notices roofs (is there such a person?), you’ll see that mine is beautiful, new and no places where the shingles have flown off in the latest wind storm. But who looks at roofs?

I am so proud to have done this major effort to reduce my carbon foot print as part of Seattle Community Power Works. The final numbers came through in the blow test today. Looking good. One tight house. It’s for the Planet and the grandchildren. I hope you’ll take advantage of any opportunity you have to do the same. Congratulations if you already have.

Leave me a comment and while you are at it, please ‘like’ my Face book page. I’d appreciate it.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving,

Betsy

www.EmpoweredGrandma.com

206 933 1889

Joint pain reaction to bee sting

Gentle Reader,

The energy retrofit continues this week. The work took me and one roofer through a yellow jacket nest on the side of my hill. The result was painful stings. Mine were on the belly and chest. The roofer had to be taken to the emergency room for treatment. He became short of breath and had other severe reactions. He didn’t return to work the next day.

Arthritis pain can be greatly exasperated by insect bites. Here’s what I learned doing a web search after experiencing so much joint pain.

“Allergic Reaction

“An allergic reaction involving the entire body can occur, this can be due to one or multiple stings and may range from mild to fatal, and death can occur in minutes. The majority of the reactions occur within the first 15 minutes, and nearly all occur within 6 hours. There is no connection between the number of stings and how severe the reaction will be. As a general rule, the faster the symptoms come on after the sting, the more severe the reaction will be. Death that occurs within the first hour of the sting is usually from airway blockage or low blood pressure.

“The earliest symptoms consist of itchy eyes, facial flushing, generalized hives, and dry cough. Symptoms may worsen rapidly causing chest or throat constriction, wheezing, difficulty breathing, bluish discoloration of the skin, abdominal cramping, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, vertigo, chills and fever, shock, fainting, loss of bowls or bladder, and bloody, frothy sputum. The early mild symptoms can progress quickly to shock.

“A delayed allergic reaction, appearing 5 to 14 days after a sting can occur. Typical symptoms include fever, fatigue, headache, hives, enlarged lymph nodes, and multiple joint pains. Commonly a person will have forgotten about the sting and will not understand why the symptoms have suddenly come on.” Advanced Patient Education.

My own joint pain occurred in the first 36 hours. I didn’t put two and two together for a while. My weekly hiking buddies and I went up a steep trail on one of the so called Issaquah Alps foothills of the Cascades, Squak Mt. My knees were killing me and my hips. The Pain Relief Complex helped, but I was glad to get to a flat area where I could stride out and loosen the joints up. The crazy remedies that helped with the swelling and the tenderness included one of our skin care treatments called Calming Complex and our toothpaste, called New Concept Dentifrice, and a third product, Desert Wind Roll-on Antiperspirant. All these products are effective because of the ingredients. You can read about them at the resources page.

If you have a remedy you have used for insect bites, I’d love to hear about it, and so would my readers, so please leave a comment. If you’d like to see the videos I’ve been shooting as this project goes forward, here is one. Go to my You Tube channel to see others.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving!

Betsy

Calming Complex, Toothpaste and Roll-on deodorant for bee stings

What’s behind these products that makes them effective after the redness and itchy results from insect bites? Bee stings? Mosquitoes? Wasps?

When the reaction is severe, see a doctor immediately. The after effects can be soothed using these Shaklee products.

Enfuselle Calming Complex designed by Shaklee’s scientists for sooth the skin as part of a complete anti-aging treatment system. When used as directed:

Natural, gentle beta glucan creates a soothing barrier of protection against the environment
Refreshes and calms the skin while minimizing the appearance of fine lines
Significantly improves skin smoothness within 1 month
• 145% decrease in the appearance of fine lines in 28 days
• 150% decrease in the appearance of wrinkles in 28 days
• Significantly improves the skin’s ability to retain moisture
• Hypoallergenic
…Remember, Calming Complex is “calming and soothing” to the skin and it also gives deep
hydration. Both oily and dry skin will benefit from Calming Complex — it has a “balancing” effect, leaving the skin neither oily or dry – just smooth and soft.

Calming Complex is a comforting, skin-smoothing, hypoallergenic formula that gives you the protective and soothing benefits of beta glucan, for a quick recovery from environmental stress.
It’s the perfect “after” product – after sunburn, after skiing, after airplane travel, after hot/cold shifts – after anything that makes your skin irritated and craving for comfort.

Paraben free.

Desert Wind Roll-on antiperspirant

Gentle, long-lasting protection against wetness and odors is the hallmark of this fresh-scented roll-on. Its non-sting formula contains soothing allantoin for a smooth, comfortable feeling.

Active Ingredient: Aluminum Chlorohydrate

Inactive Ingredients: Water, Glyceryl Stearate, PEG-100 Stearate, Isopropyl Myristate, Cyclomethicone, Petrolatum, Glycerin, Octyl Palmitate, PEG-5 Soya Sterol, Magnesium Aluminum Silicate, Isopropyl Lanolate, Dimethyl Sebacate, Allantoin, Lanolin Alcohol, Cetyl Alcohol, Fragrance

New Concept Dentifrice

A safe decay preventive dentifrice, especially for those who prefer to clean and brighten teeth without a lot of additives or artificial sweeteners. Its highly concentrated formula removes stains and leaves breath minty fresh.

For use with bee stings, toothpaste contain glycerine which dries out the venom. Toothpaste is an alkaline substance which neutralizes acidic venom.

I’m reducing my carbon foot print

Gentle Reader,

I am reducing my carbon foot print. My house is organized chaos. All the furnishings are stacked in the middle of each room, covered with sheets. Two young men are drilling holes in the outside walls of every room, caulking the heat registers, the joint where wall meets floor, and every nook where air can leak.
In Seattle we have an Energy Upgrade program to entice a home owner to do this. Over two thousand families have opted in, gotten their financing together, had the energy audit and done the work. The opportunity for low interest loans and government rebates may be extended if Cascadia Consulting, the small, forward reaching firm who operates this program can persuade the city to do another round, without Federal dollars.
What took me so long to sign up for this? I have a reputation as a carbon off-setter. I have bought shares in wind farms on the Lakota reservation. I have planted trees through Re-leaf America, the oldest environment organization in the US, founded in 1903. But my house was more of a tent with permanent walls, leaking air like a sieve.

Hudson River from Mary Ann's — Looking through leaky windows toward the Hudson River

After a recent trip to New York City with my granddaughter, I find myself reflecting on the actions of a single individual in the face of the enormity of the problem facing the world. We must get our carbon parts per million down to 350 or find ourselves in an irreversible environmental catastrophe. Compare the interest and effort in this far flung corner of the US with New York City.

My hostess, Mary Ann, lives in a beautiful rent controlled apartment on the Upper East Side, the Hudson River in full view from her spacious north facing balcony. The fine old metal and glass paneled windows do not latch. Walking along the path beside the river just 100 yards from her building’s front door, Ellie and I joined cyclists, mothers with baby carriages, old people leaning on canes, joggers, strollers. This is one New York’s back yard retreats.

Hudson River view from Upper West Side — New York’s back yard, walking along the Hudson

The sun danced on the wavelets of a calm river. New green, that not-shiny-yet true green that appears miraculously every May after a hard winter of snow and bitter cold. This year in New York, they were locked in a cold that would not stop, seeping into bones and the cracks in all the houses.

I asked Mary Ann how she managed to stay warm in this 17th floor apartment with its rusty metal-framed windows.

“The heat in the building is so great; I have the windows open all winter.”
Can you believe it?

The carbon foot print of New York City by itself, if reduced by 15%, could turn 400 ppm to 380, I have no doubt. This is an emergency. Federal dollars could reverse the course of disaster by compulsory retrofitting every building in New York City, changing every light bulb. People would be put to work in the process.

It would be worth every penny. Repeat the process in Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and Gary, Indiana. Every major city where old high rises scrap the sky as wicks of heat pouring into the atmosphere.

I have learned in talking with my environmentalist daughter that NYC has excellent energy recovery projects underway. It is a huge job.

My little project will off-set the carbon foot print I create every time I get on an airplane for the next 10 years. It is a drop in the bucket. My visit to New York discourages me from the belief that we can save our planet for future generations.

What are you doing in your neck of the woods? Let us know, please.

By the way, are you reducing your carbon foot print by using highly concentrated, biodegradable cleaning and laundry products? Check them out on my shopping page. You’ll be so glad you did. You’ll throw away 1 bottle for every 50 of those other products.

Be Well, Do Well and Keep Moving, Betsy

ps: I made a video showing the energy upgrade project. You can see it on YouTube. <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/ta1n0-YU9jI” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

Freedom is what I want for you

Gentle Reader,

Freedom from living pay check to pay check, from debt, from a schedule you did not create yourself, from worry about the back-to-school expenses and freedom from not being able to give to the people you love: all these Freedoms and more are on my mind this morning.

I just back from Denver where I was learning even more about how to achieve this freedom.

I already have this freedom. How did I get it? By joining a multilevel marketing company 25 years ago. I joined because of the health products–which saved my life–and I stayed because I recognized that selling the products would give me the life I wanted, like the one my sponsor enjoyed.

She took long walks with her friends, was home when her children returned from school. She wrote and worked in her garden. She worked hard in a disciplined way about 3 nights a week on the phone, and over lunch most days, meeting with people to demo products and help them achieve the healthy life they were looking for.

I hated my job and wanted this kind of life. And I have had just that kind of life for 25 years.

My second biggest dream was offering this same freedom to others. Several people saw the possibility for themselves but couldn’t achieve the same results. At last I have the educational tools to offer you through the Star Achievers Team, so you can have this freedom, too. The system has a price tag and is available on line just the way Stanford University or Pheonix University teach you on line for a fee. The first is a training manual with flow chart, scripts, marketing tools that allow you to work at home and people come to you.

Dust off your dreams of a better life. The stories I have heard of people changing their attitude and then changing their lives were nothing short of miraculous. Not everyone who works this online business is successful.

Earning big check with Shaklee. Results may vary. You must make a commitment to yourself and your dreams to have these results. Be aware that most people don’t go this fast.

What are your dreams? Join me.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving,

Fondly, Betsy

New approach to hip surgery

Gentle Reader,

A dear friend and hiking companion was talking with me yesterday as we climbed to the saddle above Pratt Lake in the Snoqualmie Pass section of the Cascade Mountains. Her husband, an athletic 71 year old has worn out his hip and finally, after months of thinking it was only a sore knee, agreed to have hip surgery. His doctor is promising him a speedy recovery from his arthritis, so he will back on the tennis court and out fly fishing in a matter of weeks, not month. Curious about this approach, I researched it and pass along a fascinating article from the New York times, published in March of this year.

A New Approach to Hip Surgery
By PETER JARET
Larry Kufel’s surgeon, Dr. Joseph T. Moskal, used the anterior technique for his hip replacement. Mr. Kufel said he was back at work the second week after the operation.
Kyle Green for The New York Times
Larry Kufel’s surgeon, Dr. Joseph T. Moskal, used the anterior technique for his hip replacement. Mr. Kufel said he was back at work the second week after the operation.

Larry Kufel had always been an active man, tall and rangy, who worked out regularly and picked up basketball games at the gym. But age was taking a toll on his joints, and it had become clear that he needed a hip replacement.

“It got to the point, if I did any exertion, even getting out of a chair, it felt like the muscle was tearing away from the bone,” he recalled.

Still, Mr. Kufel, 63, a financial controller in Roanoke, Va., worried that conventional hip replacement surgery would mean a long, painful recuperation. Instead, his doctor proposed an alternative that is gaining popularity across the country, an operation that many surgeons say helps patients recover more quickly.

Mr. Kufel was amazed by the results. “I was back to work the second week after the operation,” he said. “By the fourth week, I was doing a spin class at the athletic club.” A year later, he’s cycling, lifting weights, and even playing racquetball.

“I feel like I never had surgery,” he said.

The procedure that Mr. Kufel received is called anterior hip replacement. The surgeon makes the incision at the front of the hip instead of through the buttocks or the side of the hip. This approach permits the doctor to reach the hip socket without cutting through major muscle groups. Proponents claim that the procedure results in less pain and fewer complications for patients than standard hip replacement.

“We’re seeing more and more data that patients recover quicker, discontinue use of a cane or walker sooner, and have a quicker return to a normal gait,” said Dr. Joseph T. Moskal, chief of orthopedic surgery at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute, who was Mr. Kufel’s surgeon.

Surgeons have used an anterior approach to perform emergency hip repairs for decades. Anterior hip replacements were first described in the United States in the 1970s and have gradually gained popularity. No one knows how many surgeons currently use the new approach, but at a recent meeting of hip and knee surgeons, an informal survey suggested that as many as 20 percent of hip surgeons are now performing anterior hip replacements, according to Dr. Moskal — up from “less than a handful” in 2005. With more than 400,000 total and partial hip replacements performed each year in the United States, a change in technique would eventually affect millions of Americans.

Proponents note that because the operation spares muscles, patients don’t need to limit their movements during the recovery period.

“You can bend over,” said Dr. Robin N. Goytia, an orthopedic surgeon in Houston. “You can reach down to the floor. You can cross your legs — all things that patients with a posterior approach have to be careful about for a while because they can dislocate the hip.”

Surgeons who perform the procedure also say the anterior position makes it easier for them to use fluoroscopy, a real-time X-ray technique that allows doctors to precisely position the implanted artificial hip. That, in turn, may allow artificial hips to last longer.

And since the major muscle groups of the hip are left untouched, there appears to be a lower risk that the artificial joint might pop out, or dislocate, said Dr. Francis B. Gonzales, an orthopedic surgeon and assistant clinical professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Conventional hip replacement techniques have a dislocation rate of about 1 percent. Preliminary studies suggest that the rate following anterior surgery may be less than one-third of that.

Yet reports of the benefits are mostly anecdotal, based on surgeons’ experience. No large randomized studies have been done comparing the outcome of anterior surgery with other approaches. And there are downsides.

Anterior hip replacement often takes longer to perform and can result in more blood loss. Some patients experience temporary numbness in the thigh afterward.

Because the operation is tricky to perform, there is a steep learning curve for physicians, which partly explains why it hasn’t been taught as widely as other approaches in medical schools. Special operating tables have been designed that make the surgery easier to perform, but many medical centers don’t have them.

Even surgeons who perform the new procedure are quick to say that it isn’t “minimally invasive,” the term often used in marketing materials.

“We can do any of these approaches through a small incision, but it’s a little like assembling a ship in a bottle,” Dr. Goytia said. “If you’ve ever seen a hip replacement, it’s not a tissue-friendly surgery. We have to do a lot of bone work and cuts, and we use a lot of power tools.”

Despite a rising chorus of support, not all orthopedic surgeons are convinced that anterior hip replacement offers significant advantages over the traditional approaches.

“As far as we can tell from the data, it doesn’t appear that the surgical procedure is as important to recovery as the pain management protocol, the rehabilitation protocol, and a patient’s baseline pain and functional status,” said Dr. Kevin J. Bozic, professor and vice chairman of orthopedic surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

In the end, he said, a surgeon’s skill and experience are by far the most important factors. Doctors who do hundreds of hip replacements a year typically have very low complication rates, no matter what approach they favor.

“Most surgeons become comfortable with a single surgical approach and they perfect that over time,” Dr. Bozic said. “You definitely don’t want to go to a surgeon trained in the posterior approach and insist on an anterior approach.”

His advice? “Find an experienced surgeon and a medical team you trust and feel comfortable with, and leave the technical issues up to them.”

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 25, 2013

An article on Tuesday about the anterior approach for total hip reconstruction described the history of the operation incorrectly. The technique was first described in the 1970s, at a medical conference; anterior hip replacements were not first introduced in the United States about 10 years ago.
A version of this article appeared in print on 03/19/2013, on page D5 of the NewYork edition with the headline: New Approach to Hip Surgery.

After surgery certain dietary supplements can be helpful with swelling and numbness. Please see my post http://www.grandmabetsybell.com/2013/03/07/watch-out-for-the-metal-detectors/ for details.

Sometimes it is important to back away from a dogged determination to avoid surgery at all costs , get a second opinion, and move forward.

If this has been helpful, feel free to share. And by all means, let us hear your comments.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving

Fondly, Betsy

www.grandmabetsybell.com/blog/

www.EmpoweredGrandma.com

www.DoWellWithBetsy.com

Managing pain after eye surgery

Gentle Reader,

While this blog is primarily about arthritis management, I wanted to use this platform to let you know about managing pain after my recent eye surgery. I have suffered from impaired vision for several years due to a droopy eye lid condition which is corrected by Blepharoplasty. Here’s a little video so you can see how I’m doing. [youtube]http://youtu.be/rM8HjK_ZFH0[/youtube]
Blepharoplasty (BLEF-uh-ro-plas-tee) is surgery that includes repairing droopy eyelids by removing excess skin, muscle and fat. As you age, your eyelids stretch, and the muscles supporting them weaken. As a result, excess fat may gather above and below your eyelids, causing sagging eyebrows, drooping upper lids and bags under your eyes. Besides making you look older, severely sagging skin around your eyes can impair your peripheral or side vision. Blepharoplasty can reduce or eliminate such impaired vision.

There is a diagnostic procedure to determine if the droopy eyelids are in fact causing trouble seeing. I failed this test (or passed it, depending on your point of view) 3 years ago. In other words, I could not see flashing points of light in the upper half of the visual field when my eyes were relaxed.

The Blepharoplasty surgery is authorized by most health insurance plans, however I was referred to a glamour doctor who specialized in cosmetic surgery. He suggested all kinds of extra tucks and tweeks which the insurance company turned down. I was interested only in corrective surgery so I could see better and not feel so much muscle strain lifting my eyelid all the time.

The clinic where I get my medical care, The Polyclinic here in Seattle, brought Dr. Yokoyama on to do just this type of corrective surgery. The insurance company agreed and last Friday, I had incisions in the lids both on top and on the inside.

I am very happy with the results. The healing is not over yet as you can see in the video. My job is to use hot compresses several times a day and tug on the lids to pull them down and counteract the scar tissue which could give my lids a permanent and exaggerated lift. I can tell you it is wonderful to see the ceiling when I look straight ahead, and the tree branches and sky from the upper reaches of my eyes.

What I want to share with you is the medication, vitamin and herbal regimen I undertook.

Pre Op: Instructions were to stop all vitamins. I chose to stop the vitamins I know to make the blood thinner: Fish oil, GLA oil (Borage or Evening Primrose oil), Garlic, Vitamin E. I also increased the vitamins known to repair and support the integrity of the cell, Vitamin C, and Alfalfa which is full of vitamin K, a natural blood thickener found in green leafy vegetables.

The result was that I bled very little.

Post Op: Instructions were to take Vicodin every 4 hours for 48 hours and Prednisone (60 mg) for 3 – 4 days to cut down on inflammation.

Here’s what I did instead. I did take Vicodin for the first 18 hours and then switched to Pain Relief Complex, an herbal COX 2 and 5 LOX inhibitor which worked just as well. To take care of the constipation that comes with the deadening effect of Vicodin, I took 2 Herb lax tablets with each meal and 2 more at night. One of the worse side effects of surgery is the constipation that follows anysthetic and pain meds. This is a healthy way to avoid this problem.

I did take the Prednisone for anti inflammatory but only 60 mg the first day and 40 the next. The swelling was a bit much on day three, so I took another 40 mg. Now on day 6 all I need to do is hot compresses. I iced faithfully every couple of hours the first 48 hours which I know helped considerably.

Here’s my disclaimer. If you decided to follow your doctor to the letter or to deviate from their advice, it is up to you. Every body is different and reacts differently. Who knows if it would work for you the way it worked for me? But, as I always add, what if it does?

Many of my friends have already had this surgery and I understand it is common for women to consider having their eye lids done and other tucks to lift sagging facial skin as early as their 40s and 50s. I waited until 75 and I wish I had done this sooner. One of my daughters beat me to it, getting her eyes done in her 40s.

You might pass this information on to someone you know who might like to hear about some alternatives to the usual course of treatment. Leave your comments. We’d all love to hear.

Betsy

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving

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