Month: February 2018

Knee starting to hurt? Try glucosamine.

My Physician said, as he looked at the x-ray of my sore knee, “It looks like you are going to have to have a knee replacement in a few years. See this Milky looking substance floating down from your meniscus? ( knee cartilage) That is small pieces of meniscus wearing off. Sooner or later we’re going to have to do a knee replacement, otherwise, you will be bone to bone.”

This is what I take now. I get it at Costco. I was taking 2-3 of the supplied cups a day at first. Now just off and on when the knee reminds me that I should be more consistant.

“However,” he said, “we don’t know why this works but some people seem to get relief using a substance called glucosamine. You might want to try that.”

So, after doing a little research on it, I purchased some liquid glucosamine and chondroitin mixture. I had heard that the liquid compounds seem to be taken up into the body better than something in pill form.

I have been taking the stuff now for about 20 years and still have the same knee which is almost pain-free. So I am a believer. “Your results may vary.”

My theory on how this works is that the meniscus does have a mechanism for repairing itself. In the form of new cartilage cells that replace the ones that are being worn off. It has been shown that small meniscus tears do heal. Otherwise, how could something that gets this much use have much longevity? It could be, that the problem comes when the newly attaching cartilage cells, which have to be pretty soft to start with, getting knocked off by rough spots on the opposing femur joint. The same thing that was wearing out the meniscus in the first place. Your body May take the cartilage particles that glucosamine is made from and place it in between the two rubbing components, sort of like a grease or oil, to protect the new cells and give them time to set up into harder, abrasion-resistant cells.

So, expanding on the theory of loading up with as much cartilage as possible, when I have fried chicken, I tend to knaw off all the cartilage. Sounds kind of funny but, you know, if it works, why not?

If you were thinking about trying this, don’t put it off. It is said that the inner 2/3s of the meniscus does not have the blood supply to do repairs. So if you wait until you are worn down too far, it might be too late. if you do try this, don’t be in a hurry to see results. It took a month or so for me to notice the lessening of the pain I was experiencing. Probably because of the slow development of the replacement cartilage. This is all very unscientific and unproven and just my opinion based on my personal observations. But I’m still walking around on the same knees I was born with long after the doc said they were going to have to be replaced. So, if you are beginning to experience knee pain, what do you have to lose?

“I Feel Weird”…HyperParathyroidism

“I feel weird.” my 67-year-old wife, Marcy, kept saying. I asked her to describe “weird” and she would just say she didn’t know but she felt weird.  We had been visiting doctors for more than 3 years for this and she was being treated for restless leg syndrome, possible Lupus, acid reflux and host of other “guesses” the docs were making about her condition. She was taking calcium supplements due to bone loss in her hips, osteoporosis. Anti-anxiety meds, meds for her gastric reflux and more. She had three stints put in her heart due to blood flow blockage. Meanwhile, her overall general health was going downhill. She started sleeping in another room to avoid keeping me awake since she was crying nearly every night and morning from the discomfort. She no longer visited her weekly “coffee and cackles” group of girlfriends as she had for several years. She was starting to give away things of hers because she thought she was dying. And maybe she was.

At a doctor’s visit, I heard him remark “I’m not sure what is wrong but her calcium is a little high.”  I pulled out my notepad and asked him “How high?”  He said “10.6.” So I wrote that down and began researching.

I learned that having a calcium level over 10 is considered “hypercalcemia.” “Hyper,” means high and “hypo” means low.  On this website, I found a list of symptoms that seemed to match hers.  It said that if you had just some of these symptoms you most likely had the disease called hyperparathyroidism. It affects approximately one out of 80 people in their lifetime and the most likely candidates for it are post-menopausal women where the rate is about 1 out of 50.  The most common symptoms are “feeling weird” and being “bitchy.”  Well, Marcy wasn’t bitchy but seemed to have several of the other symptoms.

So we went back to the doc and I asked for a test of her parathyroid hormone level or PTH. It came in at 93. A little more about that:

The parathyroid glands are four glands usually in the neck near the thyroid gland. They were the last glands discovered in mammals and they regulate the calcium level in your blood. They are normally about the size of a grain of rice. Once in a while one or more goes berserk and grows much larger, forming a non-cancerous “adenoma” that pumps out too much PTH and raises your calcium level. It gets some of that calcium from your bones causing osteoporosis. Normally, the PTH level goes from maybe 10 or so to up to 65, depending on how much calcium you require at the time. The more calcium you require, the higher the PTH level. When all is working right and the calcium gets up there, the PTH level diminishes. A red flag is when the PTH is, say 67, and the calcium is 10 or so.

The doc said he thought possible hyperparathyroidism was a “red herring.”  I  asked him for a referral to an endocrinologist or gland specialist. When we got with that specialist he looked up the results of the PTH test he had ordered himself when we made the appointment and said it was 62 “and that was normal.”  I said “No it isn’t!  Not with a calcium level of what you see there…10.6!”  I said I think she has hyperparathyroidism. Especially with all her other symptoms. He seemed a bit flustered and said he was going to order some more tests which would take a week or so to get to and then a few more weeks for him to get back to us.  As we left I mentally fired him.

I had learned that there is a very simple 15-minute operation that takes out the berserk, but benign, adenoma through a very small incision in the neck and completely cures the disease.  So I began found a doc with good references who did that nearer to my residence in California than James Norman who does the website and practices in Florida.  His name was Emery Chen less than an hour’s drive away. (Update: Dr. Chen is now practicing in Palmdale, CA. Updated 1/9/24)

We visited his office and after only a few minutes of describing her symptoms and blood tests, he said “I think she has hyperparathyroidism. Come on in back and I’ll do an ultrasound to see.”  In about five minutes he asked me to come over and look at it. He pointed out an all-black area on the screen where there were no ultrasound echoes. He said, “See her carotid artery pulsing here and her trachea there? See the black area here? Parathyroid adenomas are very soft so don’t reflect ultrasound pulses. That’s how I know what it is.”

I’m telling you this part in detail because some docs say you can’t see parathyroid adenomas on ultrasound and say you must do what they call a Sestamibi scan or a more recently developed CT.  Both use dye contrast to identify the parathyroid glands.

We discussed with Dr Chen whether we thought we needed a Sestamibi scan. We decided we already knew enough to go ahead and schedule the surgery.

Both of us cried as the elevator came to take us down to our car. I tear up as I’m writing this and have almost every time at this point when I’ve told this story. After several years of misery, someone knew what was causing it and was going to fix it.

A week later Dr Chen walked into the waiting room where I was awaiting the results of the 15-minute surgery. He showed me a picture of the adenoma he had just taken from Marcy’s neck. It was about the size of the end of a thumb instead of the size of a grain of rice like a normal parathyroid gland.  He said “She’s cured. We tested her blood shortly after we took it out and the PTH is now at a normal level.”

Here is that photo

And cured she is!  She is back to her normal self. Back to Coffee and Cackles with her girlfriends. Back to sleeping in our room together. You can’t even see the scar from the tiny incision in her neck now. No more acid reflux, anxiety pills, feeling weird or any of the other symptoms. She will have those heart stints in forever but her heart function is great now. I’m positive that the blockage was caused by the excess calcium. Statistically, her life expectancy is now at least 5-6 years longer than it would have been with this disease.

So I urge you to listen carefully to anyone who says “I just feel weird.”  “I get kidney stones.” “I just have no energy.” “I have acid reflux.” or describes more than one of the other symptoms on this web page. Ask them if they know their calcium level. If it’s 10 or above, you may just be able to help them live a longer, happier life by referring them to a doc who knows about hyperparathyroidism and will order a PTH blood test.  Remember, one in 80 people are said to have this in there lifetime and it is one of the most under-diagnosed diseases. You probably know someone who has it.  You, they and their doc just don’t know it yet.

Adding a Sena 10C camera to my Sena 30K equipped helmet

A quandary I was in. I like communicating via Bluetooth intercom with my riding buddies and love taking videos of our rides.  The Sena 10C camera/intercom combination works well for me. I also love the new Sena 30K “mesh” intercom for its ability to hook up with 10 or more other 30K intercoms. The 10C is limited to only three. I wish Sena made a 10C-like camera with the ability to “mesh intercom” with lots of riders like their 30K model!

For our upcoming motorcycle trip to the far north First Nations’ Inuvialuit village of Tuktoyaktuk (pronounced “Tuk toy AK tuk”, referred to by many as just “Tuk”) in Canada’s Northwest Territories, our group of eight chose the 30K so we could maintain communication for the whole trip. Just like talking on an intercom to your back seat passenger but you can talk with the others on your “mesh” intercom network, hands-free, who are more than a mile away…so they say.

I have a Go-Pro Hero 4, which has a somewhat better resolution…that you can hardly see on a computer… but really didn’t want to wear it after getting used to the feature-rich compact Sena 10-C.

So I just added my 10C to the same helmet that has the Sena 30K. This meant squeezing in another set of earphones and another mic not to mention the two Sena intercoms.  I could have left off the mic and earphones but then would not be able to comment on the video and hear the myriad of status calls coming from the 10c, like “camera on,” “recording,” etc. It was actually easier to do than I thought it would be and I don’t notice the small bit of extra weight on my modular Scorpion helmet.

Here’s how it went.

I had to move the Sena 30K back just a bit from its normal spot to allow the Sena 10-C camera and intercom to clamp on in front. Both have to be on the same side to allow operation without using your throttle hand.

For the 30K, I used the plug-in boom mic and for the 10C I used the wired small mic. For a mic holder, I used two of the windsocks supplied with the 10C mounting kit. I cut the top off one, making it into a sleeve and slid the big 30K mike through it along with the wired 10C mic. Then I put the 10C mike in a complete windsock and slid it onto the 30K mike. The 10C mike is in the end. Both work very well when close to your mouth…the closer the better.

To mount the extra two speakers in the helmet, I cut out a bit of foam near the built-in speaker cutouts and put them in next to the 30K speakers and higher up to get the sound in via my upper ear. Sounds great! You can hear the higher fidelity that the newer Sena 30K has over the older Sena 10C. I only want to be hearing the 10C’s status reports, like “camera on” “recording” etc. I’ll use the 30K system for intercom, music, phone, etc. 

 

The two units do fit well together and now I can converse with my many buds on the convenient Sena 30K “mesh” intercom while also doing a video of our rides.

For more info and a review on Sena’s 30K, see here.

FOLLOW UP:  We are back from the trip both Senas worked great!  While they worked.  A couple of us had problems with fidelity on our 30X mesh units and some thought it was because of moisture infiltration. It does rain in Alaska!  One unit failed altogether…out of 8…but I had a complete extra unit along so substituted it for the bad one.  The Sena camera worked flawlessly and produced some great videos and stills. I’ll be publishing some of those later.

5 Things

Awhile back, my 16-year-old Grandson, Alex, lost one of his skis on a deep snowy slope and after looking as thoroughly as he could, came back home from the ski resort without it.  I’m lucky he lives next door, but so is he because he finds it handy to come over and ask me if I would help him pay for a new set of skis.

So now seemed like a good time to help him develop goals and the kind of organization he would need to “make it” in this world. To say the least, he was not well organized or goal-driven in his life and sometimes drove his parents nuts. But he usually listened to me.

So, after giving it some thought for a day or two, I gave him this simple list on a document titled “5 things.”  Alex complied with my instructions and provided me with his lists. We met often after that and went over some of the pleasantly surprising and honest assessments and goals he set for himself. After a few weeks, his parents, who hadn’t seen the list, asked me what I had said to him.  I shared the list and results with them. They said he was treating his sister much better, cleaning his messy room often, not complaining about his “chores” anymore and seemed to be a much happier person.  Later my daughter came to me and asked for a copy of the list as some of her friends who were parents of Alex’s friends were asking her for a copy. They were noticing the difference in him as well.

Here are the “5 things:”

5 things

5 things I should be doing better

5 things I will do to improve starting now

5 goals in will accomplish in the next 5 years

Do this for yourself and give me a copy. It must be written and printed out and also saved on your computer and somewhere on your phone. Show me where it is saved and how you will access it.

Review it at least once every 5 days for the next month

On Christmas, tell me what progress you have made and how that is affecting you.

If you do this now, I will help you finance your new skis and bindings. I get the old pair if the other one ever shows up so I can sell them.

We will not get a very expensive new set…we can’t afford it. You need to find them and we can go over why we are choosing them. The final decision on which skis you get shall be a mutual one between you and me.

Alex got his skis. His story continues but that is for another time. I just wish someone had given me this list at that age and I hope you can find a use for it.