Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Coloring Away the COPD

I am in the process of redecorating my home. What fun!!! The redecorating of my home is so helpful to me and to my health. My breathing is coming easier than it has in a long while. I owe that to color. I would like to share some insight about color. Some of it is excertped from an article and some of it is my own insight.

Color can nurture your soul as food nourishes your body.

Color can be a tremendous Ch'i enhancement when you love it, or cause a real depletion in energy if you don't.

If a color bugs you, get rid of it. It could save your marriage or your sanity or both.
What color is the COPD that lives in your body? You know what to do with that color, right? Color it and release it to the Universe. They know what to do with disease out there in the Universe. Inhale the colors that feed your health. Exhale the colored COPD.

Determine what colors are your favorites. Which ones feed you right down to your bones, and energize and heal you? Whatever colors they are, make sure that you have them somewhere in your environment. Make sure you breathe them into your lungs, those healthy colors that heal and energize.

Choose items in your colors, such as fabrics, vases, dishes, and flowers, and place them where they can feed you with a glance.

Stay within the palette you are attracted to, and your color choices will create an atmosphere you'll enjoy every day.

Be sure to choose those colors that make you feel healthier for in feeling healthier, you become healthier.

Portions excerpted from the article:Color, Nature, & Sound for a harmonious home by Kathryn Collins.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Listen Up, Big Pharma

It seems like more and more often we are learning that the drugs most of us COPD'ers and Asthmatics have been using and taking into our bodies for years are actually quite harmful to other organs, such as our hearts and livers. It is discouraging as we need these medicines to breathe. As science advances as studies conclude, we learn that there may be heart, liver, kidney, brain, eye, muscle, memory, blood damage. However, we can't overlook the good attributes of the meds. We must, however, learn to accomodate for the damage the drugs may do to other organs or look into the possibilities of alternative medicines, which I personally prefer until we can get the FDA and the drug manufacturers to be more responsible about our health and bodies. I'm worth more to me than the $$ big Pharma makes. We've got to live out loud and put a stop to this!



The following is an article that I am putting here because it is significant and I want to put the word out, too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Older emphysema drug linked to heart deaths
Tue Sep 16, 2008 1:37pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A drug once commonly used for emphysema and other forms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may raise the risk of heart death by a third, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.



The drug, called ipratropium, is made by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc under the brand names Atrovent and Combivent. It has largely been replaced by Pfizer Inc's Spiriva. It prevents bronchospasms, attacks in which the airways narrow, making breathing difficult.


"This medication may be having some systemic cardiovascular effect that is increasing the risk of death in COPD patients," said Todd Lee of Northwestern University in Chicago, who led the study.


Lee's team found that military veterans with recently diagnosed COPD who used Atrovent or Combivent were 34 percent more likely to die of a heart attack or arrhythmia than COPD patients using only a similar product called albuterol, or those who did not take any drugs.


Writing in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the researchers said they looked at the cause of death of 145,000 veterans with newly diagnosed COPD from 1999 to 2003.


Lee said doctors and patients should be aware of the potential risk.


COPD is an umbrella term for respiratory diseases including emphysema and chronic bronchitis and is mostly caused by smoking. An estimated 12 million people in the United States have COPD, the fourth-leading cause of death.


"The safety of drugs for COPD patients has flown under the radar," Lee said.


In March the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said another COPD drug called Spiriva, marketed by Pfizer Inc and Boehringer Ingelheim, may increase the risk of stroke.
(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Bill Trott)
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN1641119720080916

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Healing

Very recently has come the beginning of understanding that unless we address and restore the very health of the earth , our own health, inner health and symptoms will grow worse and worse. Mother Earth’s health and our own inner health are one and the same.

In our world, nothing is meant to be apart from the whole. With separation comes loneliness of spirit and disconnection. We must reconnect now. Our very survival could truly depend upon the reconnection. All there is~ is in some way connected.

I believe that at this point we are finally “getting it” that the harming of nature and our planet adversely affects all life and not least of all our own selves.

Let us return to those values of the earth for we are a part of them, not apart from them. The time has come to spiritually reconnect with all things that are natural and teach our children these values as well. The time has come that we must honor the preciousness of earth and life and pass it on. We are the responsible parties for the foul ups. Let us be wise enough to make the repairs and celebrate with this revival of our renewal of excellent values and healing the earth and, in turn, ourselves.

COPD makes it very hard to breathe. I want to heal the earth and myself so that I may breathe better and better. Join me?

Sweetest blessings,
Kasey

Friday, September 5, 2008

Let The Good Times Roll

Hi there and welcome to the maiden voyage of Living Out Loud with COPD. This is a different sort of blog and is not limited to COPD but will share my day to day experiences, challenges, good times, Wisdom, weirdness ~ the full monty of living with this dis-ease. By sharing this info, I will be helped and hopefully someone out there will be helped. Maybe even share some helpful info of their own. If you'd like to do that, simply email me and I will arrange for you to post it here. Just a thought. I like to share.

Well, to begin with I'd like to share some Navajos wisdom that helps me each day. The next blog may be about my new dog, Ty (pictured here),
and how he helps me cope. He really does! Or how I am coping with my former 02 provider who is trying to rip me off, . Or about the bird that got into my house and decided to land on my head. Or how people react when they see me with my oxygen out in public and how I cope with that, too. I've got lots to share and I hope you do, too.

We are all in this together so Please come back often.

OK, the Navajo wisdom.......Enjoy this sacred wisdom and let us be grateful for the sharing. Blessings!

Navajos believe in "Walking in Beauty" -- a worldview in which everything in life is connected and influences everything else.

A stone thrown into a pond can influence the life of a deer in the forest, a human voice and a spoken word can influence events around the world, and all things possess spirit and power.

Their belief system sees sickness as a result of things falling out of balance, of losing one's way on the path of beauty. So Navajos make every effort to live in harmony and balance with everyone and everything else.

EXCERPTED FROM the InnerSelf article:

Chantways: A Song for Healing
by Lori Arviso Alvord, M.D.

Sweetest blessings to all who enter here,
Kasey