Dome Sweet Home

January 04, 2012

Dome Sweet Home

Hello! Back home in Colorado!

I got back to the US on December 17th and have been very happy since. I'm on vacation for the next couple of months. It is a bit unclear when I will be headed back to Mongolia, but I shouldn't have to leave until mid-February at the earliest.

On my way out of UB, the first flight from UB to Beijing was somehow delayed 4 hours (no passengers were informed of this), causing me to miss the rest of my connections. So I ended up stuck in China for an extra 24 hours unfortunately. Air China did put me up in some hotel, but since they only had double beds left in the hotel, I was told that I had to share a room with another random guest....so I went ahead and just paid the $25 to get my own room. The next morning, I was directed to the "free" breakfast, which I should note was in a separate area from the pay breakfast. The free breakfast was sort of like eating some type of dog/cat food. I had some pasty meat dish, and the only way I can describe the texture is that it was like eating a soggy crouton. I barely swallowed it. Anyway, the rest of the connections back to the homeland were very long and boring but non-eventful. It took me about 60 hours to get from UB to Colorado Springs.

Miranda and I have for several years been wanting to go to this well-renowned naturopathic doctor in Crestone, and we finally did it. His name is Daniel Terres, and we've heard some amazing things about him. Miranda's yoga teacher has been seeing this doctor for years, and he helped her discover and treat some very early stages of cancer.

Miranda has a whole slew of health issues she's wanted his opinion on, and I was particularly interested in whether he could see any effects on my health that living in Mongolia may have created. So anyway, during our 2 hour session what we learned was very enlightening and humbling.

One other thing I'd like to say is that during the entirety of our appointment, I was very impressed with the science he used. He was definitely not some metaphysical read into your soul and see your past life and diagnose you with an associated illness type of doctor. There was a small component of that, but most of it was based upon hard observable science.

Miranda and I each had two blood tests done, one type was a live blood test (apparently much different than any test you would normally get in a Dr's office because that blood is "dead," it is sampled, sent off to a lab, and analyzed days later), this live blood test involved taking a small sample of blood and looking at it seconds later under the microscope with a 50X objective. Here are some screenshots of what we saw:

This is a snapshot of some of Miranda's live red blood cells. Apparently their "stickiness" is a sign that her blood is highly acidic and generally lacks energy, an effect of eating high-sugar/acidic/meat/dairy foods.

This was the most frightening moment of the whole appointment. Here, in Miranda's blood, you can see a large worm (Strongoloides) intermingling with her red blood cells. It turns out that both of us had had an infestation of parasites in our bloodstream, except Miranda had two separate types of worms (eewwwwww!). She started crying and about puked. Apparently, having parasites in one's blood is something this doctor sees quite often, and is fairly easy to treat. He was unsure of the exact cause/duration of theses parasites, but most likely it is from eating meat that wasn't properly cooked or has been sitting out too long (Mongolia? most likely....)

Another friend from Mongolia, a pinworm, amongst Miranda's blood cells.

I wish I would have taken a video of this, but what you are seeing here is a live virus attacking a T-cell in Andrew's blood. We actually watched this virus attack the cell and kill it. Again, another common occurrence, but frightening to watch nonetheless.

The next blood test we were offered was a dry blood oxidative stress test.

This image is of Miranda's blood and generally is pretty healthy, although some of the black spaces show lack of mineral absorption. Miranda also had a slightly discolored ring along the edges of her blood samples, which we were told could be a sign of chemicals or heavy metals in her blood (from .....who knows???). My blood did not show any signs of chemicals or heavy metals, so maybe my system is doing a better job of cleansing my body from toxins I'm exposed to.

This is a snapshot of my dried blood cells, and I was told they for the most part looked healthy, except for some of the small blue dots, which apparently are related to adrenal gland stress.....sounds about right, I've been working a lot the past several years under a lot of pressure/stress. I also am having problems with mineral absorption.

Lastly, Daniel Terres used Iridiology (the art of eye reflexology) to examine the state of various systems in our body. I think the Western medical community is very skeptical of this technique (they call it pseudoscience or quackery)...but I preferred to just keep an open mind and see what he tells me about it.

Here's a snapshot of my eye: in general he said most of my organs/systems in my body looked healthy, but he did notice increased stress on my bladder/prostate (who knows what that is about?), excess mucuous (I agree 100%, constant swallowing) as well as stress/some damage to my esophagus, trachea, and lungs...not a surprise there, although him noticing visible damage to my lungs hardly makes me feel okay to go back to UB and beat my body up some more.

Here's a view of Miranda's eye: he noted stress on Miranda's lymphatic system, a weakened pancreas mainly due to high sugar intake, as well as a proneness to kidney stones.

So overall, we had a very informing appointment, we were very glad we went. We're trying to take his advice as a way to anticipate weaknesses in our body and do our best to prevent diseases that could occur years down the road. We were given some medications to kill the worms/parasites, a variety of different digestive enzymes, some trace mineral/amino acids/plant material/enzymes and a roadbook to a different diet based on our blood type.

That was another interesting part of our appointment. Apparently a person's blood type has strong implications for the type of diet they should eat. Its sort of an ancestral heritage/evolution type of thing. Some people's blood types originate from an agricultural type diet, while others more from a hunter-gatherer type diet. Miranda and I are both type A-, which means that small amounts of chicken/fish are alright, but red meat should generally be avoided. So we'll work on that :) More to come....lots of videos.