Body Changes - Confronting Leukemia

     Since I started my Regimen there have been a number of  changes in my body which I have found very welcome and, at the same time, very surprising. These changes prove that the regimen that I have been following since March 9, 2023 is definitely improving my health in ways that I would have never expected. This page is dedicated to the description of the changes in my body that have occurred as of the date on which this page was edited last.  So far the changes have occurred in the following areas:

As shown on the  page "Graph of Blood Tests", my leukemia has remained essentially stable and I do not have any symptoms yet.

      Written: July 2024

At the time of the picture above  I did not feel like an old man anymore: No more pains throughout my body; No more difficulty finding a comfortable position to sleep in at night;  No more watery eyes; No more embarrassing and limiting hand tremors; No more problem with short term memory; No more old age spots; I was back at walking straight without consciously trying; And from the picture above, I am sure that you agree with me that some muscles had come back and flab and hanging skin had gone. Not bad for an old man!

It is worthwhile to pause and reflect on the significance of my experience so far: Good food, Supplementation with vitamins & minerals with emphasis on vitamin C, and Exercise,  have cured me in just over a year of several ailments for which modern medicine had no remedies!  And all along I was always feeling well ... with none of the bad side effects that always accompany the drugs offered my modern medicine. Would you not say that these health improvements are nothing short of miraculous?

So far, the health improvements that I am experiencing have proved my hypothesis, namely,  that Good food, Vitamins & Minerals Supplementation with emphasis on vitamin C,  plus daily Exercise is all that we need to stay healthy.  The question is "Will it last". At my age, time is definitely not on my side. However, I am sure that I will be able to prove that in our old age we cannot prevent looking old ... but we can definitely prevent to also look sick!

In fact nowadays old people do not only look old, they also look sick and disabled ... in spite of all the numerous pills they are taking on doctors's advice. This was not the case when I was growing up in the early 1940s. My grandmother died at 102 while working in her fields. I remember her proudly saying " I never saw a doctor in my life!". My grandmother looked old just like all other old people. But like all the other old peasant people that I new, she remained looking healthy and able to her very end.

    It has been one year and nine months that I started my regimen on March 9, 2023. During this time I have been enjoying a remarkable amount of stamina and wellbeing. I now regularly put in more than 9 hours each days working on computer programming, this website, or doing research in a number of interesting topics such as nutrition, biology, chemistry, and physics. The rest of the time has been going into cooking my own meals, visiting family members, and working-out as per my Exercise program. My weight has remained pretty stable while at the same time my unwanted bulges have been "melting" away. Clearly I am building some muscle, and it shows! And this is happening as I am getting within 4 months of my 85th birthday. Some time, I get the distinct impression that I am getting younger! And all of this while at the same time my Leukemia is remaining pretty stable! To put it mildly ... it is just awesome! Also there have been some very welcome health improvements as discussed below.   

      In May 2015, I had open heart surgery to replace my aortic valve which was damaged during my heart bypass surgery five years before. I recovered rather quickly from the surgery, but an annoying issue remained for several years: My eyes were filling with tears that would overflow and run down my face pretty well all the time, especially if I was talking to somebody. Very embarrassing! The driving would also increase the volume of the tearing to the point that I had got into the habit of filling the opening above the car door handle with face tissues so that it was easier to grab one to dry my eyes. Very bothersome! For about a couple of years I tried to find a solution with the help of my doctor. After trying a number of potential remedies, the only avenue left was eye surgery to enlarge the tear ducts that drain into the nose cavity. Eventually a date was set for the surgery. While waiting for the surgery, I found difficult to rationalize the use of surgery to fix my problem. I reasoned that as surgery was not addressing the root cause, which was not understood, my problem would very likely reappear in spite of the surgery. And so I cancelled the surgery and decided to wait to see if anything in my body would react and restore my eyes to good health. But nothing positive happened for another four years or so.

     Towards the end of 2019, Covid-19 was declared a pandemic and my wife and I opted for Vitamin C to protect us, rather than the Covid-19 vaccine. So, I increased my daily dose of Vitamin C to 2,000 mg (I was already taking 1,000 mg), and my wife started on a daily dose of 1,000 mg.

     A couple of months went by before I suddenly realized that my tearing had almost gone away. The improvement was significant enough for me to have almost forgotten that I had a problem, but the issue was still there; just it was much less bothersome.

     Move forward to about May 2023, about two months after I had started my vitamin Supplements , which, among other things, had increased my Vitamin C supplementation from 2,000 mg to 6,300 mg. I was driving to our cottage when I suddenly realized that I was not needing any more the tissue paper that I had on my door handle: my tearing had stopped completely!!! And stopped it has. It is now about one year and nine months since I started my Regimen, and I have never experienced the tearing issue since. Another note of interest is that neither me or my wife, who also increased the daily Vitamin C to 3,000 mg, have caught a cold or other respiratory infection since we started the Vitamin C at the end of 2019!!!

    About three years ago, I went to see a dermatologist for a blackish spot on my back to make sure that it was not cancerous, and  I asked the doctor if I needed to worry about the scab in my ear. She told me that scabs like mine show up on the skin of older people and that it was nothing to worry about. And so, I did not worry about it any more.

    Around the end of 2022, I was on the phone with my son and, when I mentioned my scab, he asked me to send him a picture. A bit later, my grandson came to visit me and took the picture shown in Figure 3 below.

    About three months ago, I noticed that I could not feel the scab in the ear anymore. So, at the first opportunity, I asked my daughter to take a picture of my ear to have a good look, and this is the picture shown in Figure 4. From this picture it is clear that the scab is gone! The skin where the scab was still looked a bit more shiny but no scab left.

    Of course I was overjoyed, especially because this showed that the state of health of my body was moving in the right direction. But, to what could I attribute the disappearance of my scab? I attribute it to the better nutrition that my body has been receiving since March 9, 2023. Most of the credit, I give to all of the vitamins I have been taking, especially Vitamin C. At the time of the second picture, I was taking 10,180 mg of vitamin C per day.

    As my age progressed, my body aches became increasingly worse and my flexibility and strength decreased. By the beginning of 2023 I had got to the stage where I really understood what it meant to be old as eloquently put forth by George Burns, my favourite entertainer. One of his memorable lines was that you know when you are old "When, getting up in the morning, everything hurts and whatever does not hurt does not work!". As I moved through my daily chores, my body would warm up and the aches became more tolerable, but they never left me. The most bothersome thing occurred at night when I had to find a pain free position so that I could sleep. It got to the point that the only position comfortable enough to sleep in was lying on my left or right side, with one pillow between my legs and one pillow supporting the arm that was on the outside, and holding my hands together. Crazy, right? But that was the only way that I was sufficiently pain free to be able to sleep.

    Gradually, as I progressed with my Regimen, my body aches started "fading" away and, at the time of this writing, I am glad to be able to say that my body aches are now just a memory! Of course, I still have some aches, but all with an explanation: such as  I lifted too much weight, or I slept too long with one leg pressing on the other, or I did too many chin-ups. The all pervasive and unexplainable body aches, which I could not shake off regardless of how I positioned myself, are gone! I am finally able again to walk straight right away after I get out of my car without having to walk hunched over for a while.

    I judge that this disappearance has resulted from the combination of my exercises, my diet, and my vitamins supplementation, again, especially vitamin C. In his book "How to Live Longer and  Feel Better" (1) Pauling reports on pages 221 to 226 several successes with treatment of Arthritis and Rheumatism with B and C vitamins. There, and throughout his book, he reports evidence that these diseases are due to nutritional deficiencies in these vitamins. We must remain always alerted to the fact that the nutritional requirements of one person are different from those of others (3,4 ). Accordingly some of us need more vitamins than some others to achieve good results. How did I decide on the amounts of vitamins to take? I have started at some reasonable amount and increased to the level at which it appeared that it was not causing any discomforts. So far I have not experienced any discomforts and I am pretty sure that I can take more vitamin C, but I will not do that unless it appears necessary.

    Also we need to remember that nobody can tells anyone of us, individually, the maximum amount of vitamins that we can take as no tests have been developed for this determination. Medical researchers seem to have forgot the importance of biological individuality (3,4). We ourselves are the only ones that can determine this amount by paying careful attention to what our body is telling us. I have always felt comfortable increasing the amount of each vitamin that I take because vitamins, especially vitamin C, are non toxic. Vitamins are food!

    To put it in perspective, there is no record of anybody ever been killed by a vitamin overdose. Contrast this to Aspirin which is considered a very safe drug. Aspirin kills thousands every year due to overdoses or suicide attempts. Over-the-counter analgesics such as Aspirin, Tylenol and Advil topped the list of all substances used for suicides by people aged 10 to 25 from 2000 to 2018 (21,24). It is time to replace these drugs in our medicine cabinets with vitamins, especially vitamin C for colds and flues, vitamin B complex for stress and depression, Camomile tea for headaches and tummy discomforts, and garlic for blood pressure and to chase away any negative thoughts! I firmly believe that good food, supplements, and exercise lead to vibrant good health, and healthy people do not succumb to the lure of suicide.

    In general, my memory has remained pretty good as testified by the fact that I still work writing computer application programs for the electric power industry. However, for a while I had been noticing that my short term memory was suffering. Towards the end of 2022, I started to notice that I was having difficulties remembering numbers longer than three digits shortly after looking at them.

    The reason that I noticed is that in the morning, I need to sign into the online network of one of the companies that I work for, and I need to provide, as part of my credentials, a six digit number which is displayed for a few second at a corner of my screen. When I sign in, I have to read the number and then move my eyes to the textbox into which I have to type the number. By the time I started typing, I had been finding that I could no longer remember the last three digits! And so, it would take me several tries before I was successful in signing in because the number changes every few seconds. Although it bothered me a bit, I did not worry too much about it especially because my ability to think logically did not seem to be suffering.  

     Much to my surprise, about three months ago, I suddenly realized that I did not have to struggle anymore to sign into my work network. The six digit numbers appeared to get "etched in stone" in my mind, as soon as I looked at it, and stayed there much longer than I needed to remember them. At the same time I also realized that, although for a while I had been unable to keep thinking with sufficient energy to be able to keep coding for more than about five hours or so in any one day, now I was finding that I was able to work effectively for much longer.  Also I could not absolutely work past about seven at night and, surprisingly, now I was finding myself working late into the little hours of the night without apparent fatigue and without loosing my ability to keep thinking clearly and energetically. Now, I have literally to tell myself  "Ok, it is time stop ... it is time to go to bed!". This, for me, is truly short of miraculous and I would never have expected it!

     While I was digging for a possible explanation for my memory and work energy experience, I remembered the diagram below. This diagram documents the result of a study to assess the impact of vitamin C on the Intelligence Quotient of students. The study showed that the Intelligence Quotient scores of the students increased in proportion to the amount of Vitamin C that the students were taking. This diagram provides an explanation for the reason why my memory improved when I increased my vitamin C dosage. This diagram was reproduced from page 201 of Pauling's book (1). In this study, the students were taking a vitamin C amount equivalent to 180 mg for a 80 Kg adult.

     One of the factors that influenced our decision was our understanding that the viruses that mutate the surface proteins, that our body relies on to recognise and destroy the virus, cannot be vaccinated against successfully. This used to be a common wisdom only about twenty-five years or so ago ... what has happened in the mean time? As Covid_19 is such a virus whose surface proteins mutates, surprisingly faster than was expected, we knew that vaccination against it would not be too successful. When you add to the difficulty of developing a vaccine before the virus mutates again, it becomes more clear that the Covid-19 vaccination campaign would likely not be too successful.

     Instead my brother, who stayed away from vitamin C, but took, and is taking, every dose of Covid 19 vaccine as soon as they became, and become, available, has got sick with Covid-19 about ten times since December 2019!  

     As it befalls most seniors as they get older, their hands start to shake uncontrollably especially when doing work that requires a steady hand. I had been no exception. I even discussed it with my doctor, but he considered the drugs available not effective and to dangeorus. So I endured it as best as I could ... until a couple of months ago.

     There were four tasks that troubled me in particular when I tried to do them.

   The first task was tapping or inserting my credit card when paying after shopping. It always  took me a couple of shaky tries to do it. This embarrassed me to no end as I don't like to be seen as a disabled old men and this clearly gave me away in a most embarrassing way!

    A second task was trimming my moustache when I shaved which requires a straight razor to trim it neatly. The shakiness of my hands not only made the trimming very difficult,  but often I ended up cutting myself. Shaving the rest of my face was not as dangerous as I used a safety razor, and I managed in a shaky kind of way to do it. I remedied this by resorting to taking 225 mg of L-Theanine about an hour before starting to shave. This did not reduce my shakiness much, but enough to allow me to trim my moustache without any cuts ... most of the times.  

   A third task was putting the coffee grind into my Mocha coffee maker. For me this is a daily morning ritual. This simple operation had become very trying, so much so that I had resorted to putting a paper towel under the Mocha machine before putting the coffee grind into its coffee basket. The paper would catch the grind that I spilled, and made the cleaning after much simpler.

    A last task that I had been doing all of my life ... was signing my own name. It became nearly impossible! So, I had resorted to avoiding as much as possible situations that required signing my name, such as writing checks to pay for purchases.

   And, as other seniors with this condition know, the shakiness of my hands impacted everything else. All my life I had been very handy around the house and I always did pretty well anything that needed to be done. This was no longer possible, and I had to rely on others to maintain my home.

    And then, over the last three months or so, I started noticing significant improvements! My hands tremors have become much less severe to the point that trimming my moustache is not much of an issue anymore, I no longer dread repair task around the house, and I do not need paper under my Mocha machine! My hands still shake ... but much less! I am, of course, overjoyed and I am anxiously waiting to see if it keeps improving. The improvements to date are already quite remarkable! But, if my hands tremor stop completely, this would really be astounding!!! Again, I must thank vitamins, especially vitamin C, for these amazing improvements. And I must thank Dr Linus Pauling for his research and his books, papers, and lectures on vitamin C (1,2,3,29).

   Noted added in December 2024

As of to date (December 2024) I am over joyed to say that my hands tremors have pretty well totally gone. It is hard to believe it, but it is true! Now, the only time that my hands shake is when I get upset at something.

  

Written On: March 2024

Edited last : September 2024

At my age, it is understood that wound healing is more difficult. But this has been proven not a valid "given" for me as demostrated  in my last three surgeries.

On august 2023 I underwent "Carpal Tunnell Syndrome" surgery on my left hand. The healing of the wound was so quick that everybody was amazed, including my surgeon. This is demonstrated in the pictures below that show the stitched wound right after surgery and the healing progression over the next two months. The healing was fast, and resulted in an pretty well invisible scar!

And I would be remiss if I were not to mention that the above result is consistent with what Linus Pauling said that vitamin C would do if the amount taken is sufficiently large (2). At the time of this surgery, I was taking 10,180 mg daily of vitamin C, along with the other vitamins (see page Vitamins & Minerals).

In February 2024 and July 2024 I had hernia and appendicitis surgeries respectively. Again in both case my wound recovery was so quick to elicite surprise in my acquaintances and in both of my surgeons. At the time of these surgeries I was taking 12 g of vitamin C daily.

I had had severe trigger fingers in both hands for last five years or so: They are healed now!

Some details  to come ....