I've Got Vascular Inflammation | Meeting with a Cardiologist

That was my mouthpiece. That keeps my mouth shut, so I breathe through my nose at night. It's been a wild night. I did crash and go to sleep at 8 o'clock. It's now 6, and it was glorious.

Uh-huh.

I went to sleep about 8:30. 8:30? I could have kept going. Yellow lights for nighttime. Let's switch that up. Yes, Gideon? Did you get me an audiobook? Yeah. Are you feeling any better? No. You don't have a temperature anymore? I don't feel good. Okay. Can you listen to an audiobook on your phone, Gideon? Gideon, let's try. Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty. I thought you were lost, Sabina. You're here. I haven't seen you in weeks. Did you get pregnant? That's a little loud. I hope it doesn't wake up Mama. I bet it's the knobby tires. That was a loud workout. Honestly, I don't know if that's gonna work. You trying it? Went 20 minutes, light sweat. It's too loud though, although it didn't wake up the beautiful one. It annoyed everybody else and myself. Was this assembled at all? Uh, yeah, the motor back on. I introduced the bike trainer in between. You know, I train kettlebells 4 days a week. Well, this was going to be a day 5 and a day 6. It is going to be more aerobic. I'm working on my higher blood sugar levels and some concerning vascular numbers. Some steady exercise will help with that. Have you seen Sabina much?

Sabina?

Oh yeah, I saw her today. Yeah, I saw her today too. I thought she was gone. I hadn't seen her in weeks. Thank God for an easy Amazon return experience. Working out is hard enough, so the process unrelated to like the strain of the muscle and vascular system doesn't need to be miserable. We're not gonna do it. Alert going on. Alarms are unavailable. Signal loss. Yeah, you were turned off. We got rid of that 2000s glucose monitor in choice of the phone. Got my replacement from knocking it off the other day. 103. I'm checking my glucose. Why does it jump right when I wake up? When I start turning in the bed, 5:30 when I'm starting to wake, and then it just jumps.

I just read about it.

Oh, it's a thing? Not just me.

The normal hormone changes your body makes in the morning will boost your blood sugar. Your fasting blood sugar reading can go up even if you follow a strict diet.

Hmm.

The boost in your sugar is your way, body, of making sure you have enough energy to get up and start the day.

Wow.

If the dawn phenomenon affects you, to you. Try to eat dinner earlier in the evening, do something active after dinner, like going for a walk, which you are.

Uh-oh. Oh man, it's right where my bike was. Rubbed a hole in the carpet.

Did I do that?

Was that the noise? I think we're gonna have to try that again and see if we can't raise it off the ground and just make sure that was it, because I would really like that to work. Okay, you nervous about this? Second opinion. Doctor call today. I wouldn't call that a second opinion since the first doctor recommended it.

Yeah, it's just what they call it.

This is somebody more specialized in vascular health.

Correct. This is a cardiologist's office.

Cardiologist. You've gotten good at that. Why am I 3? 3 days in a row. You're burning both fat and carbs.

I think it gets better as I'm longer.

Yeah, it's a low carb day. 45 G's. Don't matter what it is tomorrow. It'll be a high carb day. Josiah's birthday. That appointment's at noon? Yep. So we need to have an early lunch.

Or, yeah, I guess, because you have airsoft after that.

Yeah. The training, the monitoring, all that stuff is all well and good, but that the heart and the foundation of our health journey is this homestead. You ready for the project today? Don't jump up and down too much, Josiah.

Hang yourself.

Don't get hurt. Don't get hurt in celebration. We have a bunch of gold waiting to be made. We have some leftover deep bedding from the cows just waiting to be turned into compost, and we gotta do that before it gets too, too cold. I wish we would have started this about 2 weeks ago. Where's all this stuff gonna go? Our shed, but hopefully we can make room for it. Let's get this ready first. We are making progress, Josie. That's all we got to do. I think this one bay will hold all that. This little shed next to our house is going to come in clutch. It's going to be our new barn. Guys, you want your barn in your house if you can help it. I mean, you want it at zone zero, as close to it as possible. My house The shed we're clearing out. My house, the shed. Because you don't want to go out of your house and go out yonder to start the day. You want to start the day at your house. Therefore, get the barn, which is visited every day, in the house, or at least as close to the house as possible. Framers are back. What's this? And that is why I'm not going anywhere. We got those guys Uh, moving. There's some clarifications need to be made and they're on it. 3 different projects. Got to deal with the house, the foundation of this whole homestead. Looking good. You want to go get the track loader? It's a nice quick way to move all our tools, keep them on a pallet. You go get our bucket. Is he over track loader work? I don't think so. Look, I love this. The chickens are finding food in here, just like microbial life. Plus they're scratching it and stirring it and helping it get air. Working while we were working, doing something else. Any organic matter is welcome. Urine too, but I'll spare you the shot of that. You can imagine, but I gotta pee. So this is still yet pretty unbroken down. See that? Some hay. That would be fine on the pasture because it would break down on the pasture. Hey, hey, let's not, let's not. We're gonna teach them to run through the fence. This is what that turns into. Rich, rich soil. Compost. And you know what compost pile can be? It can be the beginning, the foundation, the centerpiece of the homestead. Listen to what Joel Salatin has to say about it. If one object defines a homestead versus just a home, it would have to be a compost pile. Building a compost pile is the ultimate momentum indicating that a person understands ecology, cares about stewardship, and enjoys participating in caretaking responsibilities. How you feeling? I'm doing fine. A little better? I was delighted. That's good. Doctor's calling right on time. I'm hoping we get maybe more insight on why I have concerning vascular numbers.

So we did have some of those markers of vascular inflammation.

Yes.

Kind of systemic inflammation, so really it's kind of trying to dial it back. Where are these things coming from? So have you done much in the way of like a systemic detox? Where are you at with all of that?

Um, so nightly he does an Epsom salt bath and a sauna.

It's kind of just a matter of peeling back these layers and seeing, all right, is it truly just a cardiovascular risk or is it kind of an environmental risk that we really need to dial in?

We had insurance labs drawn in June and he was feeling super great. And that was before he did the mercury detox.

That was as good as I've felt in 10 years.

And then in August he like started having crazy pain in his feet, like where he just—

which, that's where my symptoms are mostly, my feet.

We have a mobile phlebotomist that comes and she's coming tomorrow morning. So if we could get those labs, we can throw these other labs in with them and she can draw for all of them.

I really like that lady.

Yeah.

We did good.

She's great.

Uh, we did good. She's not taking away my meat.

No, no, she's— I appreciate that, you know.

I appreciate, uh, a doctor who says it's our reality and it's the most nutrient-dense food we can get.

Yeah.

Please sum it up for me. So we talked about— here we talked about a little bit of the— we didn't really talk about the Glucose. Hey, we did. We talked about the glucose.

Yeah, we did. So her thought on that is that the pain— your body is pushing cortisol because of the pain that you're experiencing. Like, probably before you get out of bed, you're maybe even dreading—

cortisol, the counter of glucose?

No, so cortisol is just a hormone that your body produces from your adrenals. And so, like, I'm thinking you probably, before you even get out of bed, you're bracing yourself almost for the pain that's gonna happen once you get out of bed.

Which to some extent, that's normal to be elevated because you're waking up, you gotta get going, you gotta go to work.

Correct, and cortisol does, but she's thinking that maybe it's working too much, so she would like to test the cortisol.

Sometimes I don't want to get out of bed because I'm like, it's gonna hurt.

So see.

So my body's pumping myself up.

Correct, exactly.

To step on the ground.

Exactly, and adrenaline, cortisol and adrenaline, and it's all happening.

So she wants to test that.

So that could drive your blood glucose up, which could wreck your A1C, she said. And especially like with the the pain flare that you had definitely in August and September. Like, you were in so much pain that your body is just, you know, really—

we're gonna test cortisol, so we're gonna test the— and then vascular numbers. We spent a good amount of time talking about that.

Correct. So her thought on the vascular numbers is that it is something systemic inside of you.

She really wants to do like a comprehensive detox, and which is like A regimen of supplements.

Correct, a regimen of supplements over like a span of time. So she'll start off with like this really kind of basic and then we'll move in and she wanted to do a couple blood tests.

That treats mold, Lyme, metals, everything.

Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be good. We haven't done that before?

Not to that comprehensive.

Okay.

And so, yeah, I think that that's really great and and she wants to do a couple blood tests just so that you can tweak the detox protocol. Because, you know, they have like— they already have like the protocol, like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, right? But then she's probably saying like, maybe we'll not put that in and we'll put something else in.

I liked about her that she's not a big supplement girl. Yes, she wants to get me off supplements in the end, except for the, you know, the bone and the liver.

Yeah, the bone marrow and the liver. We don't have to take those supplements if we're actually eating what we grow here. Yeah, which she was a big fan of all of that.

Oh, the connective tissue. What did she think about the connective tissue?

She thought that that's not going to be a terrible— I mean, it's not a terrible idea to look and see.

Yeah, okay.

Um, but like everything that she was asking you as far as like vascular issues, you have none of the issues that go with that. So yeah, that was good.

She liked me keeping low carbs.

Yeah. She said nobody ever died of a low-carb diet.

She just said nobody died of a low-carb diet. So 40 carbs or less for me, just fine. That's, that's a couple tablespoons of honey, an apple, and, uh, cheese.

But do protein first.

Yeah. And she says if I'm gonna do a carb, take the protein first. Yeah, she said it can have your glucose spike, spike if you just eat protein before you eat Oh, wait for her note and then we'll order the things. And we're getting blood tests tomorrow already, so.

Mm-hmm. I hope that that—

Let's get on this.

Well, so I'm getting my blood tested tomorrow for sure. And hopefully, hopefully your test comes in the mail from the connective tissue disorder test. We were really on board with like the lifestyle aspect already.

Yeah.

We already were doing a lot of the things doing all the things.

So that's good. Rebecca, what do you think? Crazy. Roomy enough for you? I know. I need to call the dumpster. Do you have the phone on you? I don't know if the internet's working.

It's just crazy because I've never seen it like this.

Never.

It might rain Friday, so we just gotta push all this stuff back a little bit more. So they took all the walls off.

Yeah, because they're gonna sheet— you're gonna sheet rock.

We're gonna sheet rock.

The electrician needs to put stuff in here.

That was part of it. We have to get this ready for him so he can put stuff in here. That was part of the— well, no, yeah, that's leaving. All right, so all the ductwork needs to get out of here and all the things, and then we're gonna block so that we can hang coats. Oh good, you know, we need to have blocks on the wall so we can put—

good, won't that be wonderful?

I know, we're gonna be organized.

Oh, look at this bathroom.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh look, they framed around these.

They did, they framed around.

They're good.

Um, the skylights. I was just like, you know, walking through here feeling like, will this be full of obtrusive. Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't feel obtrusive at all.

That's good.

I have a fridge here and a shelf there. We can do a shelf here.

We need to have a ladder in place to be able to— yeah, get up there easy.

I wonder if we can somehow incorporate the ladder into the shelf.

Look at this, we're gonna have a farm bathroom, y'all. We don't even have to take our shoes off.

I know, you won't have to take it.

You just go right there.

Now, if your shoes are extremely muddy, she's got rules.

You guys will have rules.

No, you guys will just have to clean this. Oh, like it just keeps getting more and more real.

Yeah, this space is phenomenal. I know.

Two stand-up freezers here, and then we'll have the double fridge in here. The double— there'll be a double fridge in here. Shelf, ice maker. We're gonna make this a workout space. The long freezer there and a long freezer here. The chest freezers, okay, will go here. But I think that's all the freezers we need.

I hope. Freezers, freezers everywhere.

I know.

It's the end of the day. I haven't seen you so spirited in a long time.

I know, I feel a lot better.

Why?

Well, I went to acupuncture yesterday. I think that helped.

It's not just that you feel—

yeah, I do, I feel good.

A little bit of a pressure off. Now we have a plan for me.

Yes, and I feel good about that. I do feel good about that, but I was feeling better even before then. I'm still tired though.

I'm just It's good to have you back, babe.

I know. Well, yeah, it's good to— it's good to be semi-back.

We've got the bike back in. Was it rubbing the ground? Okay, yeah, that's definitely how we burn the ground. Now see if it still makes a crazy noise. It has to be the carpet, you think? I don't know what I'll do because I don't want to like ride the bike outside. I need to supervise the kids. We don't have room for a Peloton. I don't want to get a new another bike just for this. Oh, it's not the— it's the knobby tires, Dar. That's too loud. We got a motorcycle in the house. I don't know what we're going to do, but it's not that. It's so obnoxious. Another problem for another day. Happy day.