#for context: I have digestive issues and brought a lot of my own food to accommodate for it so she didn't have to | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

linksthoughtbrambles · 2 years ago

Text

Not thinking about apples.

Part 3 of Adventure Log+ (Sequel to Link’s Thought Brambles. There’s a lot of context that you’ll lose if you read Adventure Log+ without having read Link’s Thought Brambles. I highly recommend reading in order!) - Edited 1/29/23 to improve voice and tighten up language.

Plan.

We need a smart, solid, fool-proof-certified plan that actually makes sense.

Planning… is not my strength. I come UP with plenty. I execute few. I complete even fewer. I did pretty good on the festival, but Zelda had a huge part in that, too. The two of us together and a lot of manpower made that work. AND coffee! That stuff was good. Could use some right now.

It’s true the end of the festival wasn’t great… but that wasn’t down to our planning. Not really. Some stubbornness- NOPE, not thinking about that! Not here.

Zelda has that look on her face again. The one that wrinkles her entire forehead. She might’ve had it when Rionee galloped up to her at the shrine in Tabantha, but it changed so fast I’m not sure. I’ve seen her concentrate on problems, but usually sciencey ones she enjoys. Not something that could be life and death for us, so long-term we’re stuck with it for months if we get it wrong.

…I’d looooove to eat one of those leftover caramel apples. No one else has reached for one. Resist, Link. Resist. Don’t look and don’t drool. This meeting’s important. Someone’ll go for them once their dinner’s digested. There’s a reason they brought us those, right? They saved some tasty things for the fancy people so they didn’t have to slobber messy food while otherwise busy in public. They can slobber them behind closed doors in peace instead. This is their chance to eat one as much as it's mine!

I want one with the pink peppercorns even though I just ate a whole plate of spectacular goose-potato-onion hash and wow those itty-bitty orange thingies were so good. I’ll ask Zelda what they are later. Too weird to ask in this room.

…Am I one of the fancy people now? I’m sitting at the king’s receiving room table with him, Zelda, and Jeralt. Kind of surprised Ahadis isn’t here.

Well… maybe this isn’t the “fancy” table. I never thought of Jeralt as fancy. He’s captain of the royal guard now but as down-to-earth as you can get. Aurexler, now HE's fancy.

I guess I never thought of father as fancy. Huh.

“I’d already spent a good deal of time on this itinerary.”

Aaaaand I’d stopped thinking about the plan. Again.

“Considering recent events, I must alter it considerably. What I thought I must accomplish a week ago seems, now, less immediate and more suited to Purah and her teams. Please, father, Link, Jeralt—I shall enumerate my goals, but interject your own thoughts.

“The overarching goal is to ensure Hyrule is as prepared as possible for the oncoming Calamity.”

Same goal for the last twelve years.

“We still must accomplish previously existent goals in relation to that. Difficulties the champions are experiencing with their Divine Beasts must be resolved. I’d originally intended to visit the domain first to address Ruta’s gait. That’s still of high priority.”

No arguments there.

“I’d visited Daruk and Revali relatively recently and addressed some issues- ah, that is to say I’d addressed a mechanical issue on Medoh. I’ve no idea what assisted Daruk, but by the time we left he seemed an expert at controlling Rudania.”

Don’t blush, Link. Not important right now.

“We ought to check on Urbosa, though she hasn’t complained of anything specific.”

“Phhhh. Agreed, daughter, though I find my own mind drawn to the problem of this field around our castle.”

“Yes. That may be the most urgent issue. Fi said the field is strengthening. Who knows what it will be capable of in future?”

“So Fi needs energy so she can do something about it.”

Indeed, master. I require either you or the Princess—preferably you—to provide it.

“So how do we get enough? Do I just eat?”

“Eat?”

“Sorry, sire, it’s Fi, she- thanks, Princess.”

“Of course—here-“

“It’s fine. I can see, daughter.”

...We need to access a significant energy source, master. You would need to eat an extremely large amount of food.

“How large?”

Large enough as to make it impractical. You do have physical limitations, and your body can only digest so much food at once. If we waited a long time, it would work.

“Okay… I’m… not willing to do that, anyway. This is already a winter we think some kinds of food’ll be scarce.” I mean… I LOVE food, and I know I eat more than it seems like I should have to. I’m hungry, so it must be doing something, but you know what, Link? You’re going to have some goddess-damned self-control this winter and NOT eat whole pumpkin pies all by yourself because you can definitely survive on a lot less than you can eat… aaaaaand everyone can read this anyway even though I’m not talking, including the king, and won’t my mind just shut up??????

Uuuugh, they’re smiling at me.

“Heheh. Goodness, Link.”

Yeeeaaaah, I know. "So, not food. What are the other options? You said I could convert things, but like what?”

There are a myriad of options, master, but you are still contained in a physical body and limited by its ability to survive exposure to certain energies. For example, you are able to convert solar energy, but just as any Hylian you are subject to sunburn.

“Um. Is that why I like sunshine so much?”

That, I do not know.

“Okay, so… can I hang around outside all day and soak up Sun?”

The rate of energy transfer is too slow. To build up the quantity of energy required would take years.

“...I'm out of ideas. It's not like I can stick myself in a bonfire.”

Forgive me, master. My intent is not to frustrate you. There are few energy sources I know of in this era which either of us would be capable of absorbing in great quantity. I am curious how the Divine Beasts are faring.

“Though we don’t understand the energy sources, the Divine Beasts appear to have plentiful energy for operation, if that’s what you mean.”

In part, yes. I have little knowledge of the beasts' design. I am uncertain how they draw power. I had boarded the beasts in the past as well as with my current master during his visit to Vah Rudania, but that is all.

Ooooh, Zelda didn’t know about that. Hehe, hi. Yeah, I see you looking at me, can we talk about it later? It’s really not that important.

“If you say so, Link.”

“Kmph- I think so!”

“Indeed!”

“Skies above, it is most disorienting to see your thoughts appear on this screen, Sir Link. In your place, I doubt I’d be able to put up with it.”

“It’s not so bad, sire, not now that I’m used to it.”

“Mmmph. Most wouldn’t get used to it, I think.”

I’m just glad I’m not thinking about apples. Caramel. Peppercorns! Table. Table table table table table THINK, Link, think think think window! Uuuuuuh CROWN! Crown frown down town clown NOO not clowns, they’re fricking terrifying, uuuuh surround around astound found wound bound crowned ooooh look at that, that’s crown used twice, nice, rice lice mice thrice slice-

“What in blue blazes are you doing?”

“S-sorry, sire. Just trying to be normal.”

“…This is not normal.”

“Yeah, that’s true, you’re right sire, I just, well, I like rhymes.”

“That explains nothing.”

No, it doesn’t, does it? I can’t explain though because if I explain I am in SO much trouble, not that he doesn’t know about it, not really, but I mean who wants to find out exactly what stone thrown clone blown throne bone alone moan NONO lone-

“Sir Link, would it help you to leave the room?”

“It would make no difference, father. The slate records his thoughts regardless.”

“Auph.”

Yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel about it, too.

“What of the ancient furnaces?”

Huh? “What about them, Princess?”

“The blue flames are a highly concentrated form of energy.”

Blue flames?

“Yes. They burn ceaselessly in two locations, one in northeastern Akkala and one near Hateno in Necluda. The facilities from which they spring appear nearly identical to the main control units within the Divine Beasts.”

Fascinating. With a few exceptions, location names in this era have altered since my previous awakening. Where is Akkala in relation to this castle?

“Akkala is the northeastern-most province of Hyrule, to the east of Death Mountain.”

Thank you, Princess. I would extrapolate that these ancient furnaces tap into the energies of the sacred flames. The remains of the far more ancient Fire Sanctuary may be beneath this furnace you speak of.

“These furnaces did not exist before?”

I cannot confirm that. My previous master was not always privy to the Sheikah’s plans.

“Did they not trust him?!”

To say that would be untrue, but he was not involved in that civilization’s infrastructure. It’s possible the flames were already in use and therefore went unremarked. They also may have been created or accessed during his time or afterward. It is unknown.

“Yet the locations are significant to you.”

Thus far, Princess. One sacred flame burned in the Fire Sanctuary far to the northeast past Death Mountain, and another burned in the southeast—south of a heavily forested area yet west of a large expanse of water, within a mechanized cistern. The third burned far to the west in a free-moving vessel.

“Three flames, yet only two ancient furnaces. The location you describe in the southeast would indeed fit the location of Hateno Village. But there is nothing we know of in the west.”

It may be belowground.

“I suppose.”

If the energy sources are in fact the sacred flames, I am capable of absorbing them directly. Each may still harbor distinctive properties which would leave me unbalanced were I to absorb a great deal without also absorbing an equal amount of the other two. Since one is as yet undiscovered, this presents a problem. I could, of course, expend the energy of only one flame shortly after absorbing it.

Oh, of course!

…Consider reigning in your sarcasm, master.

...They’re all looking at me. “… Sorry.” It’s not like I trained myself to control the snark in my head. Only out my mouth.

Another option would be to collect these energies in other vessels, return them here, and apply all three at once, were the third available.

“It is possible to transfer the blue flames with a torch. A series of lanterns leads from each to a nearby location. They allow the flame’s relatively easy transfer and utilization at facilities at the end of each path.”

Fascinating. How long do these lanterns burn once lit?

“Typically not more than a day.”

How were they constructed?

“We don’t know. They pre-date our own efforts.”

Have any attempts been made to re-create them?

“The team in Akkala has attempted exactly that without success. Purah and Robbie may know more than I do. Or Impa, now I think of it. Regardless, we could deliver some of this energy to the castle for you, or you could absorb it yourself?”

Either is possible. You and my master can also absorb and store a large amount of this energy, if it is indeed that of the sacred flames.

“…May I ask what the sacred flames are?”

They are, in essence, a type of potential energy remaining from the Goddesses’ presence in this realm, in a time so ancient even I did not yet exist.

“I thought potential energy was more of a mathematical model than an existent energy form.”

Mathematical models which make accurate predictions tend to represent reality, Princess, even if the reality seems too strange to be true. The chemical energy you gain by eating can be considered a form of potential energy, for it is simply energy in storage: not currently in use.

I do not know whether these blue flames behave as the sacred flames did; energy may change form. You have already provided evidence the flames have done so.

“What evidence is that?”

They are blue. Yet the ones you’ve discovered would match the flame of power and the flame of courage, which appeared red and green respectively when I last encountered them. Only the flame of wisdom—in the west—was blue.

“These flames were left by the Goddess?”

No, master. The Goddess Hylia did not create these flames. The Goddesses did.

“Goddess…es?”

Yes.

“H-how many Goddesses are we talking?”

Three, master.

“So there’s two more?!”

No.

“Wh- three minus one is two.”

Apologies, master. Hylia is not one of the three Goddesses who originated before the creation of Hyrule.

“What?!” “Holy Hylia-“ “Merciful Goddess!” “Hhhh!”

Yes, your forebears ten-thousand years ago had also appeared unaware of them.

It’s not just me, this time. The entire room is flabbergasted. Four Goddesses. FOUR. And we didn’t know about three of them?

“Fi... is Link correct? Are there four Goddesses in total?”

…

?!!?!?! Holy S@#$- “there’s more, aren’t there?!”

…

“That is SO a yes!”

Not necessarily, master.

“No, no, I’m calling definite bulls@$# this time, Fi. No way. You clam up when there’s something I’m not supposed to know. If there were four, you’d have said so. Right? Am I right?”

“…I’m afraid I quite agree with my appointed knight.”

I may need to alter my protocols.

“OH! Oh ho, so there are at least five! Who’s the fifth one, then? You said there were three Goddesses who came before Hyrule, and for some reason you’re okay with letting us know that, but not that there’s a fifth one out there?”

If I reveal too much, all it will do is hurt you, master.

…The king, maybe she’ll listen to the king? “Sire?”

“…I must admit the difficulty of taking it in. Fi.”

Yes?

Wow. No title? I wonder if that’s why he’s taking so long to answer her…

“Hphhhhhhhh. There is no delicate way to phrase this. Was Zelda praying to the wrong Goddess?”

…Holy sh-

No.

OH thank you for that.

Prayer was inconsequential.

And now his head's in his hands.

What was he hoping for? Either way, he was wrong. I guess if prayer mattered, but to someone else, at least he wouldn’t’ve led her too far astray.

Still… if I was a Goddess, and someone was praying but just didn’t know my name, I’d answer anyway. Seems petty not to.

He’s still holding his head.

Zelda keeps switching between him and the slate, like she’s not sure where to look. Maybe I’d better say something?

“Fi, can you tell us what they’re called? The other three Goddesses you mentioned?”

Farore, Nayru, and Din.

“Wow. Wow-“

“Those names are in the song of the Goddess.”

Yes, Princess.

“…It’s not gibberish.”

No, Princess.

“Would you please translate the words? I assume you know the song.”

I do, and I can honor this request. The translation is:

Youth, guided by the Goddess’ servant Unite the earth and sky and bring light to the land Youth, show the two whirling sails the way to the light tower-

“The two what?”

You have interrupted my flow, master.

…Er. Sorry?

Thank you. The rest follows:

And before you a path shall open, and a heavenly song you shall hear.

Spirit Maiden, guided by blood and memory Nayru, Farore, and Din Trust you with life and the gift of the Moon And skyward a song you and your youth shall sing.

…Is it sacrilege if I think some of it is still gibberish?

Yes, master.

!!!!

…

…You’re joking.

Why would you think so?

I can tell!

How, master?

Your tone went all funny.

What tone?

THAT one you just did!

With all due respect master, you are not the most adept person in this room when it comes to interpreting tones of voice.

Your voice is in my head. I have advantage.

“Fi.”

Ooh. Okay—Princess privilege.

Yes, Princess?

“Spirit Maiden is one of the titles you listed as mine. One you could apply to me in lieu of Your Grace.”

That snapped the king’s head up.

It’s a highly exalted title. The kind of thing usually reserved for the king and queen and only under extremely formal circumstances, like royalty from across the chasm or sea. Not that it’s happened at all in my lifetime—everyone’s too afraid of the Calamity. The highest of high priests/priestesses at the temple of time sometimes get called that, but again only in very formal circumstances.

That is, if my father’s descriptions can be trusted. Sometimes he’s… a little off.

And Fi hasn’t answered her.

“Fi, why didn’t you answer the Princess?”

The Princess did not ask me a question.

“The question was kind of implied.”

Was it, master?

“Yeah.”

…And she’s still not answering- “Fi, is Spirit Maiden a title you could use for Zelda instead of Princess?”

Yes.

“So… the song’s talking about Zelda?”

You are jumping to conclusions, master. Calling the Princess ‘Princess’ does not mean every Princess referred to in a story is her personally.

“Fair enough, so what’s a Spirit Maiden?”

A spirit maiden is a living person able to wield the magics of the Goddess Hylia.

“Okay… so the song’s about the person from an earlier time who was wielding that magic. There’s also a youth and a servant of the Goddess. Blood and… memory?... guide the spirit maiden, and the three Goddesses we just found out about trust her with life and whatever the gift from the Moon is. And she’s gonna sing a song with the youth, ohh and then there was all that weird stuff about showing two whirling sails to the light tower? What’s that about?”

…

“Fi?”

…

“Seriously, why translate it if we’re not allowed to know?”

…Are you certain you wish to know this, master?

“Sure, why not?”

…Very well… the whirling sails refer to a pair of windmill-like sail structures atop two stone pillars.

“…And?”

…The youth needed to turn the pillars.

“…Okay…how about you don’t make me ask for every part of the explanation, and just tell us the whole thing?”

You are unaware of the nature of the knowledge you seek, master.

“Fine, I’m unaware! Enlighten me.”

…

A pair of mock-windmill sails built into the pillars controlled mechanisms to turn them. The youth needed to spin the wheels a sufficient amount to point the large sails toward a nearby navigational light-tower. He did so with a device intended to expel air. The-

“Goodness, that sounds complicated. Why not simply turn them by hand?”

Why indeed, Princess?

Wh-? What’d I do to deserve that hit of irritation-?

Regardless, the youth turned the pillars to face a nearby tower-

I can FEEL it when you get huffy like that!

I do not get huffy, master.

...Okay. Sorry. Please continue?

I appreciate your cordiality, master. The tower then activated and allowed the youth entry to an internal ladder. He was then able to reach the top of the tower-

“Seriously? How tall was this tower?”

…Approximately forty feet, master.

“Wow. Not a strong climber, I guess. I’d’ve just slogged my way up there by hand, no spinning pillars required!”

“It does seem inefficient.”

…Quite.

Do you wish to hear the remainder, or may we move on?

“Oh, for sure, let’s hear it!”

“I concur.”

As you wish… the youth activated the light tower which focused a beam of light upon a thunderhead, opening a path to fly through it.

“That’s it? What about the second verse?”

We discussed that.

“Not all of it. We covered what a Spirit Maiden is and that the three names are Goddesses. The rest of it, about blood and memory, and trusting with life, and the gift of the Moon, and the song-singing—well, I guess the song-singing is pretty self-explanatory, but not the rest.”

Master, do you not agree that the first verse’s true meaning was, in fact, quite mundane?

“Silly.”

Then why force me to recount the meaning of the second verse?

“…You have a point.”

I do.

“…This tangent sprang from our discussion of the flames—that they could serve as an energy source for Fi. Let’s return to that, please.”

Sorry.

Oh. I get a smile?

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for, Link. It is… tempting, is it not? To delve deep into the unknown territories of knowledge.”

Oh. Ohhhh. “I’m not as smart as you, though.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, but let’s return to the subject of greater urgency . The rest can wait.”

Yep. Control yourself, Link.

“As I understand it, Fi, Link and I are each able to collect energy from these flames. Correct?”

Yes, Princess.

“Link’s pouch is able to store energy extra-dimensionally. Could we store blue flames within it?”

It is possible, Princess. If time essentially does not move within it, a lit torch should not go out.

“Excellent. Link, how much can your pouch hold?”

“I have no idea. It’s never NOT let me put something in, not unless it was really huge.”

“How huge?”

“Well. I, ah. You know, like, a… a moblin.”

“A moblin?!”

“Yeah.”

“What possessed you to attempt that?!”

“They start disintegrating when they die. I figured if I could put it in the pouch it wouldn’t happen, and they could study it at the lab. But… you know. It didn’t work. The opening didn’t expand to let it in.”

“Ah. That makes sense, now you explain it. Alright. Let’s attempt a test with an ordinary torch.”

Okay. Hopefully the pouch won’t catch fire.

…Not a pleasant thought. I do NOT want to lose it. Guess we could go back to the woods and ask for a new one, but—oh s$#%, what would happen to all the stuff I have in there if the outside burns?!

“Due to the travel time necessary to collect energy from the flames, I propose we also attempt a shorter-term solution of some kind.”

No one else is thinking about this.

Any solution involving me will dissolve as soon as I leave this place, Princess.

“Yes. I thought we might try to disperse the field temporarily and note any effects.”

Do I let Zelda potentially destroy my awesome pouch?!

“I also wonder if Purah and Robbie might be able to manufacture an object which would serve a similar purpose.”

Maybe I empty the whole thing out first.

“We’d intended to visit the royal lab soon, regardless, and I intend to propose this to them then.”

Prudent, Princess.

…Maybe we don’t test it until we have a duplicate, I bet the Koroks would-

“Sir Link, forgive me, but please attempt to curtail your mind’s wanderings for the moment. It is difficult to follow Fi on the screen.”

“Sorry, sire.” Stupid stupid stupid stop thinking so stupid, stare at the tasty apples or something.

“…Let’s consolidate.”

Yes, please, Zelda!

“Divine Beast Ruta in the Domain. Divine Beast Naboris in the Gerudo Desert. As it happens, I also received word from Urbosa regarding several shrines unearthed there. It makes sense to survey them. More urgent points of interest—the ancient furnaces at Hateno and Tumlea Heights in Akkala. There ought to be a third energy source westward. Fi, if you absorb all three, will that heighten the effects of your magic?”

Yes. I will also be able to absorb extra energy from the final one if tempered by the other two.

“I believe it unwise for us personally to search for this third flame, but we have quite a few parties out on surveys and digs. Father?”

“Yes, let’s send word to them—direct them to begin searching. The teams at Tanagar Canyon and eastern Hebra already are, essentially, but we’ll notify them nonetheless.”

“Alright. Fi, is there any need for me to visit the springs of power and courage?”

Not specifically, Princess. The waters of the springs served their primary purpose before written memory. There may be reasons for you to return at a later date—but traveling there now would net little.

“…As you say. We skip the springs. I did want to visit the survey team on the Great Plateau owing to your declaration of its importance, Fi—of an ancient medical facility.”

It may or may not exist.

“Indeed. The Temple of Time is also near there, and—correct me if I’m wrong—one of our goals is to spread hope throughout Hyrule.”

“Yes, daughter, though readiness is of greater import.”

“Agreed. I… would at some point like to attend a service at the Temple of Time as myself. Not in disguise.”

The heart of Hyrule’s faith. “The Yiga clan might expect that.”

“Perhaps.”

“… Can we think on that one a little more? And if we do it, can we save it for the last leg of the journey? It feels… like it’s the same level of risk as the bailey. That didn’t turn out great.”

“We don’t need to decide immediately.”

…I really want one of those stupid apples.

“I also propose we assist the populace in dispatching monsters as we travel: hope for our people, and incentive for us—yes, Link?”

“Yeah. We should try not to give our identities away, though.” And it means Zelda being near monsters. I’ll be pulling my hair out in tufts. Biting my woah! Table-smack!

“We have all failed to consider something else of concern.”

…Training Zelda?

“Father?”

“Link, your mother and sister need an escort home, and I’ll be damned if I don’t assign at least three men to stay there and keep watch.”

…S%@#. S@#%, he’s right. “Yes, sire.”

“…We’re already undermanned, sire. Ahadis and I have begun restructuring the guard schedule for threes instead of pairs. It’s hell. We need more people here, not less, and after what happened we know even re-assigning soldiers from other posts is risky.”

“Sir Jeralt, I flatly refuse to leave Link’s family unprotected. That assassin did not hesitate to send an arrow toward a young girl’s heart. I doubt his compatriots will be kinder. We let them go home unprotected, and next we’ll find a ransom note demanding Sir Link’s head in exchange for their safety.”

“We could ask them to remain here at the castle.”

“You’d ask them to give up their home to avoid hiring a few more people?”

“I- eh. No, sire.”

“Mmph. Good.”

“Might I make a suggestion, father?”

“Of course.”

“Anyone we send with them must be trustworthy. I’d… hesitate to choose those we know less well. It ought to be people who have been here many years and demonstrated unwavering loyalty and strength of character.”

“…You’re going to suggest members of the royal guard, aren’t you?”

“They are loyal to Link’s father and to you.”

“…Sir Kertiss was a problem.”

“Sir Kertiss is prejudiced, but even that is steeped in loyalty to Sir Lyle. I am tempted to suggest him specifically, since he presumably will be up for hire and certainly will not impact castle rotations.”

…She… is she serious? “Zelda… he hates me.”

“I'm not so sure. He is loyal to your father. His treatment of you stems at least in part from that.”

“He’s an asshole!”

“Yes. A prideful misogynist to say the least. I have little doubt that misogyny extends to chivalry. He would not have intentionally harmed me at the tournament. He will not harm your mother or sister. Perhaps your sister may inundate him with criticism and put him in his place.”

“Or maybe she’ll annoy the s@#$ out of him and he’ll hit her.”

“Link… do you honestly think he’d do that?”

“I have no idea. He was wiling to break my ribs.”

“He was also in the field at the time.”

“He- oh.” Zelda has a point! He was acting like such a nasty f@#$er, but what’s he like if he’s not on this island with a creepy-crawly signal to hate me and Zelda poking at him? “…Okay. Alright, I’m willing to give this a shot, but I want to talk to him AND my mom and Chee about it personally. We’re sending people in threes, right? So he’d only be one of three. If we’re choosing from the guard, I nominate Turro right this second, but do we really want to do that? Jeralt?”

“Hphhh. Some of the men on the guard have been there a long time. Some not. Turro’s been here about six years and got promoted real fast. Damn skilled. Would be useful to have someone who can hit long range reliably. He’d be useful for hunting while they’re all waiting it out at your parents’ home. Cahz and Kertiss were pretty new. Eberoy woudn’t want to go, most likely. Either he’d have to leave his wife until this was over or she’d have to leave her home here. Virn’s good, but he’s less independent than Turro. If we’re choosing from the royal guard specifically, I think I’d have to say Merendith.”

“We could also take someone from my guard. If we’re gone, we don’t have to be extreme about that.”

“Oh yes we do.”

“Link?“

“We can't travel openly after what happened.”

“W-well-“

“No way. Either we travel incognito, or your entire guard joins us.”

…That’s some quiet right there. I wonder if she’s feeling at all like I am. I’d looked forward to traveling alone with her-

“If I travel with a large party, my movements will be obvious. There shall be ample opportunities to attack us, and even if I take the entire guard they would be quite easily outnumbered. It makes far more sense to leave them here--the castle is already short-staffed for the new procedures to be put in place, and their presence will help. We... could still spare someone from that group to go with Link’s family, if we don't want to take too many from the Royal Guard.”

Ohhh, Link. Ideas. Sometimes, you have them. “If we’re not in the castle, the Yiga clan could easily find out we’ve left. We have to still seem like we’re here, at least at first. Your guard rotation still has to happen, and it needs to stay strict, and we need doubles. People who look like you and I, at least from far away. We can… pretend we’re being really careful after what happened at the festival, like we’re not mixing with people much, or maybe that we’re taking a break, staying in our chambers more.” Which isn’t far from the truth anyway. “Farniha’s about your height, and Wenn’s small like me. It could work.”

“…You’re suggesting we disguise them to look like us?”

“Yep. We dye their hair. Wenn might take some convincing, but I think Farniha’ll do it no problem.”

“Wenn will do as he’s ordered.”

“…Yes, sire.”

“Hmph. You’d give him the option, wouldn’t you?”

“…Yes, sire.”

“It’s good to respect those under your command, but autonomy should only go so far. If it jeopardizes you, it isn’t acceptable.”

…Okay.

“Well. With all this in mind… I believe my new itinerary by default should take us toward Hateno first.”

“Wh- woah, Princess, I don’t want to be near my family. That’ll make them more of a target, not less, just like in the bailey!”

“We won’t be us, Link. We’ll be Farniha and Wenn. We shall dye our hair and wear their uniforms.”

Oh man. Rub your forehead, Link. It’s late. You’re tired. Of course, it makes sense! It’s Zelda. Oh- “The people in Hateno’ll recognize me.”

“Not if you keep the helmet on.”

“… Okay. Yeah, okay, I can do that around everyone else. So, we deliver them, we visit the first ancient furnace, we collect energy-“

“And I inspect the shrine.”

“Yep, shrine inspection. That makes the next stop the domain.”

“Indeed. I imagine Mipha would like to travel with us, though she may break off beyond the Dueling Peaks.”

“Maybe. And if we’re headed to the domain next, it makes sense to continue north into Akkala from there. I… think we should avoid the citadel, Princess. Guessing there’d be people there who would recognize you, and while I’m not sure that’d be much of a problem in the domain, it might be in Akkala.” And there's also that general’s wife I’ve heard about, and how she likes to invade everyone’s privacy. I’d rather not be in disguise around someone like that.

“I agree with you, Link. Vayden and the soldier from Carok Bridge infiltrated Hylian ranks easily. It seems unlikely that would occur in the Domain, but we still ought to be wary of any travelers.”

Extremely wary. So wary we don’t even talk to them. Or… no, because then you seem suspicious. Something in between is the right way to go.

I’ll be bad at this, won’t I? I’m not exactly good at saying the right thing at the right time. And I’m terrible at lying.

“It would seem prudent to then return to the castle for respite unless we receive news which diverts us to Daruk.”

Yeah. “Makes sense to come back here, anyway. We’ll need to see if there’s news about a third flame. If not, I figure the desert is the next stop.”

“Yes.”

…Well. That’s it, isn’t it? The Plan. We set up decoys to seem legitimate as long as possible. Some people’ll have to be in on it. Damn, the whole fricking castle might have to be if it goes on long enough, and that’s just not realistic if there’s even a single Yiga clan member still here. But I figure it’ll buy us a few days if our decoys hide out up here, mostly.

…Is anyone going to eat an apple, or am I going to have to leave the room without one?

“Oh- haha, Link. With all that sorted, I believe I shall try one of these caramel apples with ginger.”

“I haven’t eaten a caramel apple since I was a kid.”

“Now’s your chance, Sir Jeralt!”

“...Maybe the one with the salt. Unless either of you would like it, Sire, Link?”

Nnnnnope. “I’m eyeing one of the pink peppercorn ones.”

“Ha. As am I, lad. Shall we?”

You can see they’re not quiiite in their prime because they’re not as fresh anymore but wow is that still good. Don’t let your eyes roll back in your head, Link. You’ll seem possessed by a poe or something. They got the caramel right where it’s still gooey but not so much so that it all ran right off the apple and the pink peppercorns are a little different tasting than black ones and they’re almost pepperminty when mixed with the caramel and then the apple just mellows the whole thing out and it’s almost as good as sehhhhhhhhhhhhlebrations. Celebrations. They’re great! Except when you get shot during one, then they suck ass.

Zelda’s the only one looking, at least. For now.

____

Read Next: How our [k]nights should be.

Follow this link for the post list for this fic.

Follow this link for my fic masterlist.

#adventure log+#botw #zelda #linksthoughtbrambles #fanfic #zelink #breath of the wild #loz #legend of zelda #botw zelda #botw link #king rhoam #fi #original characters #lots of exposition #with caramel apples

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guitarboard42-blog · 6 years ago

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What Thyroid Blood Tests to Get & How to Interpret Them

When it comes to thyroid blood testing, there’s a lot of confusion. For those newly diagnosed. For veterans like myself. And especially for those who manage to never get an official diagnosis, but still feel like a hot mess.

After dealing with my own Hashimoto’s for a decade, I’ve gotten a little better about glancing at my numbers and being able to evaluate what it means about the state of my endocrine system. But it’s taken years of practice, and many far more knowledgable practitioners helping me advocate for myself, get the right panels one, and interpret the results properly.

Even though The Wellness Project has helped me manage my symptoms, the state of my thyroid is still a moving target, one that I try to check in with on paper every few months. I get a full thyroid panel to check my levels quarterly, which helps me tie some of my changing symptoms to my thyroid function and ensure I’m medicating properly through food and supplements.

I’ve been meaning to share the in’s and out’s of thyroid function testing for some time–what panels to request, and how to interpret the end results–but I’m glad I waited until I had one of those far more knowledgable practitioners willing to help me clue you in on the best course of action!

We’re so lucky to have Jill Grunewald as our guide for this portion of the #HashiPosse journey. She’s a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach, founder of Healthful Elements, and most importantly, co-author of the fabulous resource: The Essential Thyroid Cookbook.

Read on for the biggest mistakes practitioners make when it comes to testing your thyroid, and Jill’s amazing advice for how to advocate for yourself at the doctor’s office. And if you’re in need of thyroid-friendly recipes, make sure to pick up her book!

With health and hedonism,

Phoebe

The Best Thyroid Blood Tests to Ask For and How to Read Them

It’s a common yet unfortunate scenario.

You don’t quite feel like yourself, so you go to the doctor. Fatigue, constipation, dry skin, and stubborn weight gain have been your constant companions for too long. Perhaps you’re frequently cold and your brush is revealing just how much hair you’re losing.

Your doctor may isolate these symptoms (with an anti-depressant, laxative, or a suggestion to “eat less and work out harder”). Or he or she may say, “Let’s check your thyroid.” (Right answer.)

“Checking” can have vastly different meanings, again, depending on the doctor’s worldview.

Many medical professionals (endocrinologists included) operate under the conventional medical conviction that low thyroid function (hypothyroidism) can be diagnosed via one blood test and one blood test only: thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), a pituitary hormone that tells the thyroid to do its job.

But TSH can be “normal” in the face of raging hypothyroidism. It’s not wholly irrelevant, but it tells a small part of the story and should always be taken in the context of other thyroid hormones. (More on this in the chart below.)

Regarding the evaluation of TSH as a sole indicator of what kind of shape your thyroid is in, women’s health expert, Aviva Romm, MD states, “In a world where medical over-testing is rampant, I have to say, I find myself confounded by the fact that so many physicians are resistant to ordering anything but a TSH … as the first form of evaluation, when from a scientific and medical standpoint, that test can be normal and there can still be a low functioning thyroid. It’s outdated medical dogma to order solely this test.”

To add a third layer to this story, many doctors utilize outdated lab reference ranges—those parenthetical numbers next to your lab value that tell you whether you’re within the acceptable range.

This type of thyroid “treatment” leaves many un- or under-diagnosed.

“You may be told you have borderline thyroid problems or sub-clinical thyroid disease and your doctor will watch it,”says Dr. Mark Hyman. “What will he or she watch for? For you to get really sick?”

These archaic practices cast aside a vast group of people who often have subclinical hypothyroidism, meaning they will experience a bevy of symptoms, yet only see slight changes in their TSH blood labs.

An equally important layer: the antibodies that show the presence of Hashimoto’s/autoimmune hypothyroidism–thyroid peroxidase antibody (TPOAb) and thyroglobulin antibody (TgAb)–are tests that are infrequently performed.

You deserve to know if you have Hashimoto’s, which indicates thyroid tissue attack.

It’s estimated that a whopping 97 percent of people with hypothyroidism have Hashimoto’s. And it’s been shown that once you have one manifestation of autoimmunity—any manifestation—if it goes unmanaged, the likelihood of developing yet another autoimmune condition is significantly increased.

By using old guidelines and limited thinking, conventional medicine glosses over the millions who suffer with low thyroid function.

As the saying goes, “Don’t guess, test.” It’s important to do the right tests and to evaluate your labs based on the functional reference ranges, not antiquated ranges that often lead to misdiagnosis, mistreatment, and the passage of time with continued suffering.

Here’s a Cheat Sheet for the Top Issues in Thyroid Blood Testing:

Telltale symptoms, thyroid not suspect (or tested)

Testing TSH only

Using outdated reference ranges

Not testing for thyroid antibodies (TPOAb and TgAb)

Why is the Thyroid So Important?

The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland in your neck below your Adam’s apple and is hailed as “the master gland” of our complex and interdependent endocrine (hormonal) system. It’s the spoon that stirs our hormonal soup. It produces several hormones, with tri-iodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) being the most critical to our health.

Given that our endocrine system is responsible for growth, reproduction, energy, and repair and the thyroid is largely at the helm of this complex and interdependent system, an underfunctioning thyroid can have profound implications for the whole body.

Thyroid hormones transport oxygen into your cells and are critical for energy production. Every cell in the body has receptors for thyroid hormone and the thyroid is a master toggle that flips on the genes that keep cells doing their jobs.

It’s the boss of our metabolism and an underactive thyroid can affect weight, mental health, and heart disease risk.

Thyroid hormones affect our health systemically and directly act on the brain, the gastrointestinal tract, the cardiovascular system, bone metabolism, red blood cell metabolism, gall bladder and liver function, steroid hormone production, glucose metabolism, protein metabolism, neuromuscular function, digestion, and body temperature regulation.

Given the thyroid’s far-reaching impact, it’s not difficult to understand how misdiagnosis and under-diagnosis is nothing short of a public health concern.

You Are Your Best Advocate

If you have a cluster of symptoms pointing to hypothyroidism (find a list here), listen to your body and trust your intuition. Managing hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s is an exercise in becoming the CEO of your health.

Reject the notion that TSH alone determines your thyroid status.

Don’t allow your doctor to use outdated lab reference ranges or to neglect testing for the antibodies that could reveal Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

Arm yourself with the right information. Use the chart below as a cheat sheet. You can use this to get a new set of labs or to compare values with any recent labs you’ve done.

This is what I feel are the most clinically relevant thyroid tests and reference ranges. Ask your doctor for a “full thyroid panel”and make sure the following are included:

Lab

Functional reference range

Free T3 (FT3)3.2 – 4.2 pg/mLFree T4 (FT4)1.1 – 1.8 ng/dLReverse T3 (RT3)90 – 350 pg/mL or < 10:1 ratio RT3:FT3Thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH)0.9 – 2.0 mU/LThyroid peroxidase antibody (TPOAb)< 4 or negativeThyroglobulin antibody (TgAb)< 4 or negative

Some important notes:

T3 is “the big daddy” of thyroid hormones and the most metabolically active, affecting almost every physiological process. The “free” in front of T3 (and T4) tells you what is available and unbound and therefore usable by the body.

Reverse T3 is just that—the “reverse” of T3. It blocks thyroid receptors and can cause patients to be unresponsive or resistant to T3. When the body is in conservation mode due to stress, including fatigue, nutritional deficiencies, or infection, it will reroute thyroid hormones. You want RT3 low, and high RT3 is often brought about by intense or prolonged periods of stress. RT3 is typically high in people with more advanced adrenal dysfunction (aka HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis dysfunction). You can see that there are two metrics in the chart above for RT3; while RT3 alone is an indicator of thyroid hormone resistance, calculating your RT3: FT3 ratio can also provide information on thyroid status. Click here www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/rt3-ratio/ to calculate your RT3:FT3 ratio.

According to many in the functional medicine community, anyone with TSH over 2.0 is hypothyroid, although TSH is an overall poor marker of thyroid function and should always be taken in the context of other thyroid labs, especially given that TSH can be normal in the face of low thyroid function.

This was a guest post courtesy of the wonderful Jill Grunewald, HNC, Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach, and founder ofHealthful Elements, is a thyroid health, Hashimoto’s, and alopecia (autoimmune hair loss) specialist and co-author of the #1 best selling Essential Thyroid Cookbook.

Have more questions about interpreting thyroid labs? Ask away in the comments section!

Source: https://feedmephoebe.com/what-thyroid-blood-tests-to-get-how-to-interpret-them/

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gethealthy18-blog · 5 years ago

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294: Using Targeted Nutrition to Alleviate Hormone Related Issues With Dr. Chris Masterjohn

New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/news/294-using-targeted-nutrition-to-alleviate-hormone-related-issues-with-dr-chris-masterjohn/

294: Using Targeted Nutrition to Alleviate Hormone Related Issues With Dr. Chris Masterjohn

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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This podcast is brought to you by the Kion Clean Energy Bar. We all know that finding healthy snacks for you and your kids is no simple task. Most snacks, even the so-called “healthy” ones, are high in sugar, have poor nutrient quality, and will leave you and you feeling tired or hungrier than you were before. That’s why my friends at Kion created the Kion Clean Energy Bar, a delicious, all-natural, snack that will satisfy your appetite and give you stable, long-lasting energy. My kids loves these and I love that Kion bars are made from all real-food ingredients like coconut, almonds, and chia. They have zero refined sugar. They have a lot of healthy fats and clean protein to fuel the body and brain. They are naturally gluten, dairy, and soy-free. They contain electrolytes, vitamins, and minerals. And even though they are chocolate, they won’t melt in the heat or freeze in the cold. And they have a delicious chocolatey flavor and crunchy texture that you and your kids are gonna love. You can get 15% off of the Kion Clean Energy Bar by going to getkion.com/wellnessmama and using code MAMA15 at checkout.

Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and this episode is a much requested round two with Dr. Chris Masterjohn. Like our first episode, we go deep on various aspects of nutrition and Chris is one of the smartest people I know when it comes to most of these topics. He earned a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Connecticut and served as Assistant Professor of Health and Nutrition Sciences at Brooklyn College. He has a really amazing guide called “The Ultimate Cheatsheet” which helps you decode your own body’s nutritional needs as well as a really informative website and podcast I highly recommend both and I know that you are going to love this episode as much as I did. Chris, welcome back. Thanks for joining us again.

Chris: Thanks for having me, Katie. It’s good to be here.

Katie: Well, your first interview was so helpful. We went deep on a lot of nutritional topics, and I’ve heard from a lot of the audience how some of your tips on like pantothenic acid helping skin has been really amazing for them. And I knew I had to have you back to go deeper on different nutrients and to learn more.

And, on this episode, I’d really love to talk a little bit more women-specific because I think women potentially deal with a bunch of symptoms that men may not face because of all the hormone changes that we go through, whether it be monthly, whether it be during pregnancy. We just have a lot more going on. I think than guys do, and I know if you look at the chart, like, you guys have hormone fluctuations, but women is almost like a roller coaster every month just because we have all these hormones coming into play.

So I’d actually love to start with just, like, an overview of things that you’ve found that seem to be nutrient deficiencies related to those hormone changes each month that come with the monthly period, with ovulation. What are some things we need to know and be aware of when it comes to that?

Chris: Yeah. So my interest in this first peaked when I was talking to a consulting client of mine who was having real, bad problems with headaches. And she hadn’t identified any triggers, and so we talked about food triggers as nothing. And she didn’t offer the fact that it correlated with her menstrual cycle maybe because she didn’t think it would make any sense until I asked. And then she was like, “Yeah. They always occur on day 13. That’s when they’re the worst.” And then a couple of days before I have my period, they often occur, and they’re not quite as bad.”

And so I looked at the chart and, you know, sure enough, that corresponds to the big estrogen peak around ovulation and then the smaller estrogen peak that happens to also be balanced with more progesterone in the days leading up to menstruation. And so, you know, at the time, I was researching histamine a lot, and so the first thing I think is, “Well, let me see what estrogen does to diamine oxidase activity.” Diamine oxidase or DAO is an enzyme that you need a number of nutrients for, including B6 and copper especially, and vitamin C.

So diamine oxidase is one of the main ways that you clear histamine. And so, sure enough, estrogen massively down-regulates diamine oxidase activity. And so, I suggested to my client she should try supplementing with diamine oxidase proactively around those times of her menstrual cycle, and it works. So, you know, that was the first place that got me interested in this. But, you know, once you look into this a little bit more deeply, I think we can paint a little bit of a broader picture and one that applies to several different contexts. So one area that’s been of quite a bit of interest, I think, for years at this point has been the fact that, for reasons that no one has really identified that well, high dose vitamin B6 supplementation has been at least promising, if not often effective, in treating morning sickness associated with pregnancy.

And so it seems like the morning sickness of pregnancy must be tied in some way to something that has to do with B6. So one hypothesis that came out a couple of years ago that I think is a very compelling argument is that estrogen increases hydrogen sulfide production, and hydrogen sulfide can generate sulfite, which is toxic, and which happens to be something that’s added to a lot of medications, cosmetics, and processed foods as a preservative that a lot of people don’t tell. You know, some people, like certain wines give them really bad headaches, and it’s because of the sulfites in the wine.

Well, when you’re pregnant, you’re making sulfite. And you’re not making sulfite to make sulfite. You’re making hydrogen sulfide gas, which, although like we would typically associate it with the smell of rotten eggs at high doses, has been discovered in recent years to be a very important signaling molecule that is, among other things, a vasodilator. So hydrogen sulfide gas falls into a very small category of things that can dilate blood vessels, along with nitric oxide, which has been known about for a much longer period of time.

And hydrogen sulfide is particularly important in delivering blood to the placenta when you’re pregnant. And it also has other activities related to pregnancy. For example, it suppresses preterm labor. And it’s necessary to keep hydrogen sulfide levels higher than they would be when you’re not pregnant or for probably anytime if you’re a man, in order to prevent you from going into labor early, but also just to keep the blood flow, the placenta going to nourish the growing baby.

And now it so happens that a small portion of hydrogen sulfide is going to be turned into sulfite, which is a toxic compound. And sulfite, we all generate sulfite in the course of normal metabolism from any of the sources of sulfur in our diet, especially the sulfur-containing amino acids that are in the protein we eat. And in order to neutralize that sulfite, we use a mineral, molybdenum, to convert the sulfite, which is toxic, to sulfate. Sulfate is both not toxic and is also highly useful. We use it for detoxification. We use it for regulating hormones. We use it to synthesize structural things that are protective against cardiovascular disease, highly protective against arthritis in our joints, and so on.

So, you basically have this balance between sulfite, which is toxic, and sulfate, which is extremely necessary and useful. And the more sulfite you generate, the more you need to convert it to sulfate. Even if you don’t need extra sulfate, you still need to get rid of sulfite because it’s toxic, and you do that with molybdenum. So that would imply that during pregnancy, because of increased hydrogen sulfide, you are going to generate more sulfite. Your molybdenum needs will increase to make sulfate.

Now, what happens to molybdenum intakes during pregnancy? Well, by far and away, the best source of molybdenum is beans. And in pregnancy, a lot of women develop aversions to beans and other molybdenum-rich foods just because they’re more difficult to tolerate digestively and, you know, maybe as well as taste aversions and things like that. So in someone who’s pregnant, molybdenum intakes tend to go down just because they’re less tolerant of molybdenum-rich foods. And then, at the same time, molybdenum needs to go up because of the increased sulfite generation. Now, why would that relate to vitamin B6? Well, it turns out that sulfite binds to B6 and essentially destroys it, basically eliminates it from the body.

So sulfite can induce a B6 deficiency, and high doses of B6 can be used to clear away sulfite that you were not able to convert into the non-toxic sulfate using molybdenum. So, basically, this hypothesis is that molybdenum needs would go up. But since most pregnant women aren’t meeting those needs for molybdenum, high doses of B6 can act as a…I want to say Band-Aid solution, but it’s not really Band-Aid because it’s not like you’re just managing the symptoms. You are clearing away the sulfite, but sort of like…you can’t… So, like, the doses of B6 used in morning sickness would be like 100 milligrams a day, completely impossible to get from food, so I don’t even want to call it a backup mechanism. Like, molybdenum at nutritional doses would be really, really useful here and would be most related to the root cause.

High doses of B6 are very natural, very safe, and effective, but they’re one step removed away from the root cause. It’s like because you didn’t have the molybdenum, you’re more reliant on the B6. And who knows exactly what that’s doing? You know, maybe the sulfite, because it’s giving you a B6 deficiency, that itself is taking away from important things that B6 would do to prevent morning sickness, or it might just be that the extra B6 is mopping up the sulfite, and the sulfite is what’s causing morning sickness.

Now, sulfite does a bunch of toxic things, but one of the things that it does is it can cause mast cells to release histamine. And histamine in the gut can give you all kinds of gut-related issues like diarrhea, for example, make you feel nauseated, you know, things that could be possibly related to morning sickness, especially if because of B6 deficiency. And actually, I think sulfite also inhibits diamine oxidase, and diamine oxidase requires B6 that’s needed to clear histamine from foods.

She might, on top of everything, become more intolerant to histamine, certain foods maybe. So who knows what the mechanisms are, but the sort of like takeaway point is that because sulfite is going up, your needs for molybdenum are going up. And if you don’t have enough molybdenum, your needs for B6 are going to go up, but they’re not going to go up within the nutritional range. They’re going to go up like ridiculously high. So, you know, maybe on a ridiculously high B6 intake from natural foods, you could hit 10 milligrams of B6, but you might need 100 milligrams to mop up all that sulfite. So it’s not insane amounts, but it’s way out of what you could get from natural foods.

And now, looking at that, I’m like, “Well, what about outside of pregnancy? You know, what’s regulating this? Is it estrogen?” And, yes, it’s estrogen that’s regulating sulfite. I don’t know what the effect of progesterone is, so I had trouble finding direct research on it. But it can’t be the case that progesterone is effective at countering the effect of estrogen because progesterone rises in pregnancy alongside estrogen, and none of this would be an issue in pregnancy if progesterone was really protective.

The other thing is if you look at, like, Plan B has some side effects that are very similar to the morning sickness of pregnancy, and Plan B doesn’t have any estrogen. It’s an emergency post-sex contraceptive that only has a synthetic form of progesterone in it. So I don’t know what progesterone does to this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if progesterone was actually acting in concert with estrogen here and maybe augmenting its effects just because this seems to be like a highly pregnancy-related thing. But in any case, you can tie this to the estrogen peaks in the menstrual cycle, especially…

You know, the big peak is around ovulation. The more moderate peak is in the days leading up to menstruation. And then you can also tie it to other supplemental estrogens. So most birth control patch or pill has estrogen in it, and then, you know, hormone replacement therapy that women would typically go on after menopause has estrogen in it. And so, any of these sources of estrogen are going to affect diamine oxidase and possibly make you histamine intolerant, and they’re also going to increase sulfite production, increase your needs for molybdenum, and possibly increase your needs for B6.

I think those are the things that are most related to headaches, nausea, you know, any other form of digestive complaints, feeling queasy or just like general GI distress, and any kind of allergy-like symptoms, so itching, hives, etc. And, you know, we could branch off from there in numerous directions, but I think that’s the sort of most interesting thing I’ve been synthesizing lately related to this stuff.

Katie: That’s so fascinating. And it seems like a vicious cycle. Once you’re in that, it will be difficult to pull out of it without, like you said, supplementation. So if I’m understanding correctly, would this be maybe something if people have symptoms more so around ovulation when that estrogen spike is, or they’re taking an estrogen-based birth control, this would be something they could look at and try?

Chris: Yeah. In fact, I’d go a little bit further than that. So another thing that has been known for decades to happen when women are on birth control is that the amino acid, tryptophan, which is used to make serotonin, and is used to make melatonin, and is also used to make niacin, which is vitamin B3, estrogen increases the production of niacin, vitamin B3, from tryptophan. And in so doing, there’s a neurotoxic compound that kind of spills out of the pathway called kynurenine. And there are studies…this has been known for a long time and yet no one knows it because what happened was they tested different doses of B6 to see what could normalize tryptophan metabolism.

And I would imagine this to be beneficial for insomnia and headaches in particular. Anyway, so what they did was they tested a couple of low doses, up to 2 milligrams, and they tested 20 milligrams. And they found that 20 milligrams of B6 completely made tryptophan metabolism totally normal, but all of the doses that they considered reasonable to get from food didn’t. And so, they basically dismissed their own finding, about 20 milligrams, and said like…because there’s this bias in mainstream nutrition where they don’t want everyone running around taking supplements.

So they looked at that, and they said like, “That effect can’t be, like, a real effect.” Like, B6 obviously isn’t doing something here because 20 milligrams is a ridiculous dose, and we’re not going to tell people to take 20 milligrams, even though it’s well under what the Institute of Medicine has set as the dose that would have no safety concerns, which is 100 milligrams. So the reality is that the data have said, for decades, that 20 milligrams of B6 normalizes the negative effects of birth control on tryptophan metabolism, and there are no reviews that say that.

I have to go back and look at the original papers because all the reviews from people that I would expect about this…sorry, not expect, that I would respect and that would be considered prestigious, they just cite these people citing their own data saying that B6 didn’t fully normalize tryptophan metabolism. And you have to go back to the paper and see that 20 milligrams does. So I would go more than that to say that anyone who’s on supplemental estrogen should, by default, take 20 milligrams of B6 and tweak from there, but I would do it as a precautionary measure.

Katie: Wow, that’s amazing. And the safety data, just to reiterate what you said, is up to 100 milligrams that can be safely taken based on what they’ve demonstrated? Is that also during pregnancy?

Chris: Yeah. There’s no alteration to the safe limit in pregnancy for B6 or for molybdenum, which is the other nutrient we were talking about before. And, you know, there are people anecdotally who believe that they’ve developed problems from taking high doses of B6 that are in that range, but there’s no published data of case reports showing that. And the published data of case reports shows that B6 can have neurotoxic effects at very high doses. All of those studies have used pyridoxine, and I actually think pyridoxal 5-phosphate is the ideal for P5P.

All of those studies also showed that the consequences went away as soon as you removed the supplement. And the minimum dose of B6 in any of those studies was 500 milligrams a day. Nothing below that has been shown to have negative effects. So when the Institute of Medicine set the tolerable upper intake level or TUIL, which is…you know, a lot of people are familiar with the RDA.

The TUIL, the upper intake level, is always set alongside the RDA, And the definition is basically, this is the dose that we would expect to have no risk of adverse effects in the general population. And that doesn’t rule out that someone might have a hypersensitivity disorder or something like that. But, you know, if you take 100 people and you put them all on 100 milligrams of B6, you would expect approximately zero people to develop any problems from that.

You know, what they did with that was they took the lowest observed adverse effect at 500 milligrams, and they applied a safety factor of five-fold to that. So they said, “We don’t have any evidence of this occurring at less than 500 milligrams, so we’ll take 500 milligrams as the dangerous dose and say that, you know, even if there’s 1,000 things that we don’t know, 100 milligrams should be like the mega safe dose.” And then 20 milligrams has been shown to normalize tryptophan metabolism, which is five times under that. So it’s 25 times under what we have case reports showing problems of.

And so, you know, there’s, like, dramatic windows of safety applied to get down to 20 milligrams. You know, and it’s not well-studied, like, maybe the ideal dose that you need is 10 milligrams. I don’t know. But there’s some studies suggesting that 5 to 10 milligrams are not enough to normalize markers of B6 status in pregnant women, which suggests, to me, that the ideal dose for, like, minimizing risk of B6 deficiency symptoms during pregnancy and during any conditions of supplemental estrogen is probably at least 10 milligrams. And, you know, 20 has been shown to be effective in studies, so I’m happy with that, and I’m content that it’s not a safety risk.

Katie: When especially that’s a water-soluble vitamin. So, like you said, as soon as you stop taking it, your body should be okay, even if you had a high dose.

Chris: Yeah, I mean…so I actually think that’s a myth that has been propagated very widely and doesn’t have that much basis that the solubility of a nutrient is related to its toxicity profile. So, like vitamin E, although it might have some negative effects at high doses by interfering with the function of other fat-soluble vitamins, it doesn’t actually have a toxicity syndrome at all, and vitamin B6, which is water-soluble, does. So even though…I mean, like yes, what the case reports showed is that it’s reversible. I have no idea if that relates to its water solubility or not.

So, like niacin has a serious toxicity profile at very high doses, totally water-soluble, you know. So, like niacin and B6, both have toxicity profiles at very high doses. Thiamine, which is water-soluble doesn’t. Riboflavin, which is considered a water-soluble vitamin, but it’s actually, like, 50% fat-soluble. It’s just, like, halfway in between water and fat solubility on a chemical solubility level, and at hundreds of times the normal intake has produced no safety concerns whatsoever.

So I actually think that the solubility really is, like, largely unrelated to the safety of nutrient. But, yeah, it appears to be completely reversible on the basis that the case reports showing, like, tingling in the hands and feet on it that when you remove it, it goes away.

Katie: That’s a really interesting point and good to know because that’s definitely something I have heard quite a bit, is that if it’s water-soluble, it’s fine, and you have to be really careful with fat-soluble vitamins. Since there’s an estrogen component here, is it also logical to suggest that maybe people with, for instance, PCOS or other things that lead to estrogen dominance or have an estrogen dominant component could benefit from experimenting with this as well?

Chris: Yes, I think so. And actually, I think there’s quite a lot of unanswered questions here. So, for example, in males, testosterone also increases hydrogen sulfide production in certain cells. And so it’s, like, what does the increased androgens do in PCOS to this? I have no idea, you know. I’m highly confident in what estrogen is doing here. I’m rather confused about what testosterone is doing. And, I really have no idea what progesterone is doing.

So I’m highly confident that anything where you’re approaching estrogen levels seen at the peaks during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, birth control, and hormone replacement therapy are highly relevant. I think PCOS has a complex hormonal profile that I don’t really understand exactly how it would relate to this. But I would definitely consider it because, if you think about the recommendations that I would make to compensate for this, basically molybdenum, you know, the average dose that you would try to get by default every day is like 45 micrograms.

The safe upper intake level is 2,000 micrograms or 2 milligrams. And the safety profile from that, I couldn’t find any reliable human data suggesting problems with excess molybdenum, so they actually took fertility problems in female rats at the body weight-adjusted equivalent of 50 milligrams a day and applied this extraordinarily huge safety factor to wind down to 2 milligrams a day as the safe upper limit for humans.

So, you know, to go from a normal…like, imagine a pregnant woman is reducing her molybdenum intake just sort of by, you know, food aversions, and maybe getting down to 30 micrograms a day. There’s a lot of room to go up between 30 and 2,000 micrograms. And so I’m guessing that, you know, 300 to 500 micrograms would be more than enough and way within the upper limit for molybdenum.

And like I said before, 20 milligrams of B6 should be more than enough. In most cases, you could go up to 100 and still way within the upper limit. And I would say that, you know, anything that seems sex hormone-related could plausibly relate to these things. My confidence being really high if estrogen being high is the main thing, and then the more complexities you add to that of hormonal imbalance, I’m less and less sure exactly what it means.

But if the symptoms of headaches, of insomnia, of queasiness or nausea, of GI distress, or of anything that seems related to allergies like hives, and itching, and redness, any of that cluster of symptoms that go along with definitely high estrogen and maybe other abnormalities in hormone metabolism, I would say, would be something where trying this completely safe thing of adding some extra 300 to 500 micrograms of molybdenum and 20 milligrams of B6 to, like, try and see if it works.

Katie: That makes perfect sense. To circle back on histamine for a minute, this is something I’m hearing a lot more about from the audience increasingly, so I’m wondering if it’s something that’s on the rise. Is this something that is universally worth trying for anyone suffering from histamine issues, and are there other things that come into play as well when we’re just talking about histamine?

Chris: Yeah, okay. So I think that there are some complexities when you get to histamine. And, it depends where it’s coming from, and it depends whether, for example, it’s a food-based thing or it’s more than that. So let’s, like, sort of start with the gut and work our way inside. So, in the gut, there’s histamine that you encounter in your food, and you can also have gut bacteria producing histamine. And if the gut bacteria are producing it, I don’t know exactly what to do about that. But, you know, shifting the microbiome with prebiotics and probiotics would be the thing that really fits the bill.

But anyway, let’s just assume the histamine is coming in from your food because there’s plenty of histamine in foods. And if the histamine is coming in your food, then nausea and diarrhea are probably the big things you would expect at the gut level, but then histamine can get inside your blood. And when it’s systemic, then that’s where you can start to get more allergy-like symptoms like hives, itching, or redness, flushing. That’s also when you could get changes in blood pressure.

By default, histamine lowers blood pressure, but sometimes you get an adrenaline response to that that causes secondary increase in blood pressure above normal. So any changes in blood pressure could be plausibly related. And then histamine can increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier generally and let stuff in, including itself. And if histamine gets into the brain, histamine in the brain usually, by default, is produced inside the brain in a highly regulated fashion to regulate your wakefulness and alertness.

And this is why if you take Benadryl, for example, you get sleepy, and it might knock you out because it’s antagonizing the histamine in your brain. On the flip side of that though, too much histamine in the brain could cause insomnia, or cause generalized anxiety, or could cause panic attacks. So, you know, trace it from the gut through the brain, and you’re getting nausea, diarrhea, then you get inside, hives, itching, redness flushing, then blood pressure changes, and you get into the brain, insomnia, anxiety, panic attacks.

So, any of those things, the first line of defense is the production of diamine oxidase in the gut. So you can think of histamine as having two main defenses. Diamine oxidase is the extracellular defense. Methylation is the intracellular defense. When you’re eating food, that’s outside your cells, and it’s going through your gut, which is actually literally everything from your mouth to your anus is outside your body because we’re all sort of, like, a cylindrical tube, where the inside surfaces, mouth, the anus, that’s outside the body. The skin is the outside surface outside the body, and things get absorbed to get inside the body.

So, in the gut, you’re outside the body, you’re outside your cells. You’re producing massive amounts of diamine oxidase or DAO for the purpose of completely neutralizing all the histamine in your food. And the diamine oxidase could be missing from the gut due to nutrient deficiencies, or due to intestinal damage. Nutrient deficiencies, the ones that are most relevant are B6 and copper. There’s some possible…and actually manganese is also important there, possible roles for vitamin C and possible role for riboflavin, although that hasn’t been shown with the human enzyme.

Now, on top of that, you could just have intestinal damage that’s damaging the cells that produce diamine oxidase. That kind of unravels a whole another area that I’m not really an expert in. My expertise is really in the micronutrients, the vitamins and minerals. For example, if you have an autoimmune condition like celiac disease that’s destroying the intestinal cells, or you have some pathogen in there that’s, you know, your immune system is trying to defeat the infection and is causing damage to your intestinal cells, possibilities like that are reasons for having low diamine oxidase activity.

And then, of course, I don’t really know anything about how to modify this, but you could also have gut bacteria that are producing histamine as well. Then when you get inside…and actually this isn’t just inside. So, inside your body, or even in the gut, you can have increased mast cell burden. Mast cells are those cells that produce histamine. And now we’re getting into the area where we’re not talking about the histamine in foods, we’re talking about the histamine that you produce yourself. And so the normal way that you would think about this, like, the kind of conventional thing that would happen is in an allergy.

And in a traditional conventional allergy, you have your immune system reacting to some allergen, produces IgE antibodies that then activate a cascade of things that leads ultimately to the release of histamine by mast cells. You can also have things that cause mast cells to release histamine that you’re not allergic to, and that’s what sulfite does that we were talking about before. So sulfite will just act on the mast cell to make it release histamine, but it’s not an allergy because there was no antibody made by your immune system.

It looks like an allergy because you get itching, hives, you know, redness, any of the traditional allergic symptoms that are caused by histamine, and it kind of walks and talks like an allergy because you might get it in response to certain specific foods if those are foods that have histamine in them or have sulfites in them that cause histamine release or whatever, but it’s not an allergy because, in the case of sulfite or dietary histamine, there’s no antibody-mediated response. So it looks, talks, walks, smells like an allergy, but it’s not.

And in the mast cell, there’s two categories of things that we should care about. One is antioxidants because oxidative stress increases histamine release from mast cells, and the other is methylation. And those two things are both, like, big cans of worms that we could each spend an hour talking about just on its own. But to briefly summarize, antioxidants, I think, a lot of people think about is like, “Oh, those are the things that are in berries, and fruits, and vegetables, and stuff like that,” which I think is a misleadingly simplistic way to think about it. Your antioxidant defense is very much based on minerals and protein-related things that you make yourself. And I don’t mean you make the minerals. I mean, you eat the minerals and you make enzymes that require the minerals.

So very briefly, protein, zinc, copper, selenium, iron, and manganese, vitamin E, and vitamin C, and all those colorful things in fruits and vegetables that people call antioxidants, those things together are the things we care about in terms of antioxidant defense. And then, on the second category, methylation, that’s where we get into B12, folate, and choline as the top nutrients, and then we can peel layers away to get at many minerals and B vitamins working underneath those as the main support.

You know, so that is, I think, a pretty broad view of histamine generally and all the potential things that you could work on related to it. And then you want to ask questions like, where is histamine coming from? Because it might be primarily hormonal, like we were talking about before, or you might have, you know, a rare condition like mast cell activation disorder, mast cell activation syndrome, which might require finding a very good specialist to start digging away at.

Katie: That was an amazing overview. Thank you for that. I think you’re right. There’s so much at play there, but I think so much of what you just said is probably going to be really helpful to a lot of people. And, for my own curiosity, I wonder if there’s a difference or any other considerations for women who tend to have their symptoms right around their periods or not at ovulation when estrogen strikes, but they have things like migraines, or PMS, or other symptoms right about when their period begins? Are there other nutrients that come into play in that scenario?

Chris: Yeah. So, first of all, I look specifically at this once to look at water retention. And, in general, I think that the other symptoms of PMS kind of go hand in hand here, but I didn’t look at them as much as I was looking at water retention. And I was actually surprised to find that the key difference between women who have PMS symptoms, including water retention, which I was more focused on, and those who don’t is that they actually have higher progesterone levels in the days leading up to menstruation. So the progesterone should be like an ovulation-related sort of, like, post-ovulation spike during the breakdown of everything produced during ovulation, but it should be cleared effectively by the time you get into menstruation.

And the women who have PMS-related symptoms, especially where I was looking at in water retention, they basically produce the same levels of all the hormones, but the primary difference is the clearance rate of progesterone is a lot lower. And my suspicion is the water retention issue is driven by the fact that one of the ways that you can get rid of excess progesterone, it’s… Actually, this isn’t really a way of getting rid…it shouldn’t be a way of getting rid of progesterone. But progesterone, if it’s elevated and not cleared through the normal ways, can spill over into aldosterone production, which can cause retention of sodium and loss of potassium, and with retention of sodium comes retention of water.

I don’t know if that would cause some of the other symptoms, although I could imagine it would because if you retain water, you’re going to get swelling everywhere. And if your blood volume is increasing, and you’re getting generalized swelling in extracellular space, you’re going to put pressure in a lot of places that wouldn’t otherwise have pressure. And, in your head, I think that would cause a headache. I’m not saying that’s the only thing, but it just might be a contributor there.

And so, specifically, in the case of water retention, salt is controversial. So there are some cases that I think are the exception to the rule where sometimes you can reduce water retention by increasing salt, but that’s not normally the case. And I think for most women in that case, probably reducing salt and increasing potassium is going to be the thing that’s best going to help the water retention. In terms of both, and I don’t know the mechanisms here, but in terms of both the water attention and the other symptoms of PMS, magnesium and B6 have been the top things that have been helpful.

I think the doses… I’m blanking here. I don’t have 100% confidence on this, but I believe that the papers I was looking at, the doses are around, like, 40 milligrams of B6. I would use P5P for the form of B6, and somewhere around 200 or 300 milligrams of magnesium, so higher doses of B6 and people are usually using lower doses of magnesium that a lot of people are using. But both of those seem to have some positive benefits in a number of human trials.

And then for PMS symptoms, the data is less good for manganese, but low manganese levels correlate with PMS symptoms. And it’s possible that manganese supplementation would help, but no one has clearly shown that. But notably, manganese along with B6 are co-factors for diamine oxidase, so it could all come back to histamine metabolism in some way in terms of some of those symptoms. But I don’t think histamine would be related to the water retention, but headaches and mood disturbances, maybe.

Katie: That’s really interesting. And I’m definitely gonna plug your book, “Testing Your Nutritional Status,” because I think that’s a great place for people to delve in and try to figure out what they specifically need to take.

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Katie: But I am curious, when it comes to women and hormone fluctuations, either during pregnancy or just during normal monthly cycles. Are there nutrients in general in any amounts, that you would say, on average most or all women should be taking or it’s safe to take than not take?

Chris: Can you go over the context again? You were talking about pregnancy, or you were talking about through the menstrual cycle.

Katie: I would say they need to be separate answers. During pregnancy, are there things that women need to be especially cognizant of and then also hormones?

Chris: Yeah. So, pregnancy, the nutritional recommendations are generally made around birth defects. And I think those are… I mean, I would reinforce those. So, like, the typical pregnant woman is going to get put on prenatals to have extra folic acid in them, for example. I would say you want to make sure you’re getting full…I would prefer using methyl folate as a supplement. But I think making sure you’re getting the RDA for folate through that is really important. I mean, that’s mainly used to prevent neural tube defects, which are mainly spina bifida, and then another rare one that is just fatal.

It’s, quantitatively, like, the likelihood of that happening is very small, but the consequences are so devastating that, you know, it’s just worth it to reinforce those recommendations. One nutrient that I haven’t talked about yet, but it applies across the board to all estrogen-related things here. And actually, this is a good bifurcation between pregnancy and other estrogen conditions. So, estrogen increases copper absorption from the gut, and the placenta during pregnancy causes all that extra copper to go to the baby.

So I don’t think that you need extra copper during pregnancy because you hyper absorb copper and you hyper transport it to the fetus. But estrogen outside of pregnancy causes you to hyper absorb copper just as much, and you don’t have a placenta. So, there’s nowhere to put it. It just accumulates. Now, in most cases, probably what happens is the woman’s liver just makes more proteins that bind copper such as ceruloplasmin to protect the copper from causing problems. But if the woman does not make enough ceruloplasmin and other copper-binding proteins, the free copper can cause a lot of problems. It can cause serious problems in the eyes. It can accumulate in the brain and contribute to neurodegenerative diseases later in life.

It can generally cause oxidative stress. So, what I would suggest is, normally, I would say the upper limit for what you really want to steer clear of copper is, like, 10 milligrams. I would cut that down to 5 milligrams for anyone who is on supplemental estrogen. You know, during the estrogen peaks in the menstrual cycle, if the menstrual cycle is normal, I’m not too worried about it because it just goes up for a couple of days, comes down, goes up for another couple days, comes down. It’s not a major…you’re gonna hyper absorb copper during that time, but, you know, more days than not, you just have normal estrogen levels for a woman and so it all kind of evens out.

But when you’re on birth control, or when you’re on hormone replacement therapy, those are essentially the only other conditions where you’d have chronic exposure to estrogen like you would in pregnancy. So, you’re going to hyper absorb copper and not have any place to put it. So I think it’s best to cut the upper limit for copper in half, down to 5 milligrams, and then just more generally not go out of your way to increase the 5 milligrams. So, I’m not too worried about foods. Copper-rich foods include liver, mushrooms, seaweed, shellfish.

You know, those other foods have things that balance copper and protect copper from causing problems like zinc, for example. So I’m not saying, you know, micromanage your fruits and don’t hit 5 milligrams. But I’m saying like, you know, if you’re taking supplements, don’t use supplements to go above 5 milligrams total intake. And, you know, don’t go out of your way to try to hit 5 milligrams or higher with your foods.

But for pregnancy, I would say, you know, the copper is just sort of, like, you want to get your minimum requirement for copper, and you don’t have to alter it because you are going to absorb it better, and you are going to do something with that copper. So another concern with pregnancy is vitamin A. And I don’t think the evidence is strong on this, but there is some very limited evidence that I think is very shaky that vitamin A intakes over 10,000 IU during the first eight weeks of pregnancy could cause birth defects.

And I want to reiterate here, like, triple reiterate here, the data is not good, the data is not good, the data is not good. However, most women have no need to go over 10,000 IU of vitamin A. I mean, yes, if you have signs of vitamin A deficiency because you’re poorly absorbing it, or there’s some other thing that is causing your needs to go up, and you’re monitoring blood levels, and you’re working with someone who’s sort of managing your nutrition with you, fine.

But if you’re planning on getting pregnant, and you don’t have any symptoms of vitamin A deficiency, and you don’t have any reason to think you have higher than normal needs of vitamin A, then, even though the data is not good, the data is not good, the data is not good, it’s prudent to not supplement with vitamin A to bring your intakes of retinol, which is the animal form of vitamin A that we’re most concerned with here, to not bring those over 10,000 IU per day.

After eight weeks, it doesn’t matter. So I think that’s one concern that women will encounter, and that’s basically, like, if they hear it. They might hear it put another way by someone who’s looked at the data less, like, “Vitamin A is toxic to your baby. Don’t take vitamin A when you’re pregnant.” So what I just said I think is the way to say that that actually sticks to the kernel of truth that’s there. And then, like we said before, managing morning sickness and just being proactive with, I would say, maybe like 100 to 300 micrograms of molybdenum on a proactive basis and 10 to 20 milligrams of B6 on a proactive basis as P5P.

And then, you know, I mean, for women who are philosophically natural-minded and don’t want to take extra supplements, I would say, like, you know, try to hit your targets for those foods. But honestly, like, telling a woman to eat a lot of beans when she’s pregnant might not go over very well. So taking 100 to 300 micrograms of molybdenum, taking 10 to 20 milligrams of P5P form of B6, and then… Well, one thing I didn’t mention before is that, folate, all the emphasis is on folate, but choline is very important to methylation, helps conserve folate.

And although we don’t have data in pregnant human women, we have data from rats suggesting that, if we were to extrapolate to humans, suggesting that if a woman got three times the basal requirement for choline during pregnancy, and during nursing, and then supported the growing child with three times the minimum recommendations for the first four years of life, that that could have extremely profound benefits to the brain, especially as an increase in audio spatial memory dealing with, you know, sounds and visual perception of space, preventing interference memory, which is the kind of memory loss where you forget where you parked your car when you go to the grocery store because you parked at that grocery store, you know, 350 times before, and you’re mixing all the 350 memories of where you parked your car.

And then, also, in these rats, it basically fully protects them from age-related senility at the end of life. So we’re talking about choline during pregnancy, nursing, and first four years of the child’s life, conferring brain benefits at, you know, 70, 80, 90 years old. So, I think, I actually have a good thing to link in the show notes would be my choline database. You can also Google “Masterjohn choline database,” and you can go see my recommendations there of how to get choline from foods. And if you could make a mix of choline and betaine that gets up around 1,200 or 1,300 milligrams a day from those foods, then I think that would be great to do. And you can make up the balance of supplements. I have specific recommendations for how to get choline supplements on there as well.

And I would summarize those by saying phosphatidylcholine is the best form of choline to take, and it’s the form that’s predominant in food. And you just have to be careful that, usually, when you take a supplement, the dose of phosphatidylcholine and not the dose of choline is mentioned on there. So you have to multiply it by…excuse me, you have to divide the dose on the bottle by eight to know the amount of choline you’re getting. And then trimethylglycine or TMG, you could just sort of like take that alongside the phosphatidylcholine half and half to get that.

And then the last thing I would mention is biotin. So about one-third of women spontaneously become biotin deficient during pregnancy, and biotin deficiency can cause a lot of skin problems and mood problems. So depression is a major risk of biotin deficiency as is dermatitis, which can affect a number of areas around the face and also the perineum, which is between the vagina and the anus. Particularly dermatitis in that area, like, being in the perineum would be kind of a red flag for biotin deficiency.

But also the fact that just with good markers, we know that a third of women just become biotin deficient when they’re pregnant because of their pregnancy, and it goes away after pregnancy. But, you know, how many women develop skin problems and depression during or after pregnancy? So, there, getting a few eggs a day would be your best bet. And honestly, if you try to meet the choline requirements I was just talking about, you will, by accident, meet the biotin requirements. But it’s also perfectly safe to put, you know, as much as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 milligrams of biotin in your food, which is actually way higher than what you would need.

What you’re getting for food if you shoot for, like, four egg yolks a day is going to be more on the order of 30, 40, 50 micrograms, and a microgram is a thousandth of a milligram, you know. Basically, with a supplement, if you add like 1 milligram of biotin in there, you’re getting completely safe amount of biotin that is definitely in excess of what you need. That’s my general view of pregnancy.

Katie: That was super helpful. And the last one I’ll ask you about today, but I think I’m just gonna have to keep asking you back is vitamin D because I know I’ve seen studies on vitamin D deficiency, and like low birth weights, or premature labor, and there seem to be some really big implications, but also it is one that can store in the body for at least from what I’ve read. So I know it’s one that you want to test and you want to know what your levels are. Do you have any data that you’ve seen or guidelines you would give about what target vitamin D level to aim for and what form is best to get that from?

Chris: Yeah. So, you know, vitamin D is interesting because there has been so much enthusiasm and research on vitamin D promoting high levels of it that we kind of have this…you know, which was genuinely merited by the fact that there has been and still is widespread inadequate vitamin D levels. Like, there was a study in the UK a couple of decades ago that showed that in a third trimester of pregnancy, women in the UK, on average, would have their vitamin D levels dropped to zero.

That’s, like, you know, ridiculously in need of a Vitamin D, right? And yet, we have, like, this bifurcation between kind of the general population where they probably need more vitamin D, and then we have health-conscious populations where everyone’s supplementing. And the funny thing that…you know, the majority of those people are probably getting too much, even though they, you know, certainly are people with very high needs that are minorities but are important to include here.

And so, yeah, it’s fat-soluble. But, you know, more importantly, it does have a toxicity profile, and it does increase the risk of soft tissue calcification. And I also think we always have a danger when people are told to avoid vitamin A and to take vitamin D. The risk of soft tissue calcification is going to increase because vitamin A protects against soft tissue calcification caused by too much vitamin D. So, I think, on a background for vitamin D supplementation, you don’t want to get into the hype around paranoia about vitamin A because that in and of itself is going to make vitamin D less safe.

But in pregnancy, the vitamin D needs are very similar to a non-pregnant woman for the first two trimesters. And then, in the third trimester, the fetal skeleton starts to get mineralized. And when that happens, there’s, like, a massive mobilization of calcium, phosphorus, and vitamin D all going towards the mineralization, the fetal skeleton. And that’s when you see 25(OH)D levels, which is the marker that we use for vitamin D nutritional status drop in women’s blood.

Now, vitamin D is also complicated by the fact that the levels of the markers change during pregnancy. And so, it’s actually, like, it makes things difficult because the way that they change are not… It’s well-characterized what happens, but it’s not well-characterized what it means in terms of how to re-interpret the markers to know whether women need more or less. And, as a result, I think that the reason that makes things difficult is that we have this voluminous data on, you know, thousands of studies of tens or really hundreds of thousands of people on how to interpret those markers, and they just don’t apply to pregnant women.

So what happens in pregnancy is that 25(OH)D, which is the traditional marker that is mostly used to assess vitamin D status, goes down, calcium levels go down, and parathyroid hormone levels go down. Parathyroid hormone or PTH is generally a marker of…like, the higher it is, the more you need vitamin D and calcium. And meanwhile, calcitriol, which is the active hormonal form of vitamin D goes up. And I think these are probably adaptations to supply calcium to the fetus while simultaneously minimizing the risk of bone loss to the mother because PTH, which rises when you have deficient calcium and vitamin D, helps mobilize calcium to get into your blood by taking it out of your bones.

So, basically, what pregnancy is doing… And calcitriol, the active hormonal form of vitamin D, it does take calcium out of your bones, but it also increases absorption of calcium from your food. So, basically, PTH and calcitriol are two different ways that you can mobilize more calcium into the blood, which, in the case of pregnancy, you’re trying to get it to go to the fetus. And what pregnancy is doing is, and I don’t know what mediates this, estrogen, progesterone or, you know, chorionic and…I don’t know what it is. Something in pregnancy is shifting the balance to a calcitriol dominant state to take more calcium out of your food and less calcium out of your bones. That way, overall, you get net more calcium moving to the fetus, but to the degree you’re not taxing the mother’s bones.

You can support that system by supplying more vitamin D to the mother, and that’s going to funnel in to bring 25(OH)D levels back up, which we measure as the main marker of nutritional status. It’s also the precursor to calcitriol, so it’s going to spill into calcitriol production. The more calcitriol you get and the less PTH you get, the more you’re going to protect the mother’s skeleton, while also simultaneously maximally extracting calcium from food to shift towards the fetus. At the same time, you can support that by getting more calcium in the diet.

We talked about this last time. I think the calcium requirements, the official calcium requirements are not changed during pregnancy if I remember that right, but, I think they clearly are, physiologically. And more to the point, I think a lot of women who are, you know, maybe altering what they eat because of pregnancy and their food aversions and so on, and then, on top of that, women in our audiences who are health conscious are often…especially like in the Paleo world, this is also true in the vegan world. A lot of people are worried about calcium supplements.

And I would say that in pregnancy, especially in the third trimester, to support mineralization of the fetal skeleton with minimal risk to the woman’s bones, you at least want to hit the RDA for calcium, and I would say go a little bit above it. So consistently hitting like 1,200 or 1,300 milligrams of calcium I think would be the ideal thing, alongside taking whatever vitamin D will keep your 25(OH)D levels up into the normal range, which, you know, to me, you’re looking at 30 to 40 nanograms per milliliter, in my opinion. And then, you know, it’s perfectly safe to take an extra 1,000 or 2,000 IU of vitamin D if you’re not measuring your blood level, but it’d be ideal to measure your blood levels.

Katie: Amazing. That is so practical and helpful. And, once again, our time has completely flown by, and you’re just gonna have to come back at some point.

Chris: I would be happy to.

Katie: Thank you so much for the time today. I know how busy you are. And I’m so grateful for you coming back again to share even more, and I look forward to more episodes in the future.

Chris: Awesome. Can’t wait.

Katie: And thanks to all of you for joining us and listening today, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama Podcast.” If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/targeted-nutrition/

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itinerantscribe-blog · 5 years ago

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Day 12 of 28

Oh my. Oh my. I had to nap, NAP!!, at 11am this morning. I never nap. I can’t as a rule, too hyperactive or some such. Today I had no choice, literally no choice. I had to shut down all systems -electronic I mean, though my body had clearly the same idea- to go to my couch and sleep. I mean, it’’s all so confusing. This is SO not just about deprivation of beer. I am not for one minute suggesting that I don’t drink far too much when I do drink, I’m simply saying that when I think with a cold lucidity about my beer habit, when I consider the intervals in between, the amounts when I am ingesting, when I think about my general diet, when I think about all these things, I am convinced the side effects that emerge following a period of abstinence like this, almost 2 weeks, are not generated entirely by the withdrawal from the hop. I have written a couple of blogs before about these matters, and whilst it has been a while since the previous, I recall coming to a similar conclusion. Sugar. SUGAR. Obviously the beer is implicated because it is the medium -for me- whereby the substance is delivered. This is worthy of further consideration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx14RYPqYvo

My diet is broadly speaking pure. Apart from the obvious white elephant in this affirmation -the presence of beer for those who can’t guess- I rarely eat processed food, I try to eat foods that are one and wholly of themselves. If the item on the shopping list comprises more than one component, then it is processed. For example, an apple is only of itself, that kind of thing. The more ingredients in that one item, the more and more processed it has become. It’s quite straightforward really. And although of course this is not doctrine for me, I am a fairly zealous adherent to my comestible regimen. I would be horrified mind you, to convey the impression, false as it would be, that I decided upon a such a dietary programme out of some love of self and belief in digestive purity for the sake of it. No no, far from it, my conversion to such a culinary menu was constructed as so many elements of my life as another resource in my arsenal of weaponry for the never ending battle against anxiety which I have been waging for so many years. And I have to say, this particular weapon is a fairly useful addition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmLIJAc5kyg

I concluded yesterday with a suggestion that re-education isn’t the worst avenue to consider in an effort to rid the world of this damn anxiety business. I am convinced that a re-wiring of the brain would work if it were possible to find the right tools for the job. Of course, it is hard, impossible, to achieve at the conscious level of thought as this re-editing of the mind needs to work on a subconscious level, and that level is deep underground, not so easy to access. That is not the only problem with the subconscious. Bless its cottons, the subconscious is on our side, so it thinks, trying to keep us safe and ensure our ongoing survival, but noble being that it is, it is none too bright. You see, this is where all our instinctive propensity resides, it is there, right there. The subconscious doesn’t sleep, the subconscious is permanently alert, and the subconscious has no understanding of temporal context. For example, an event no matter how trivial in adult eyes that may have taken place years ago will be remembered by the subconscious as ongoing and perennial. Something that might have appeared as a threat to a 6 year old who was using 6 year old interpretation at the time, can linger forever within the subconscious and if not rationalised close to the occurrence of the event, can become buried beneath the next event and the next and the next etc..until eventually it is so far underground that reaching it is an effort of enormous magnitude fraught with alarming difficulty and so continues to influence and effect he existence of the child now grown up. The event may be something so inconsequential, so nondescript, so totally trivial that of itself it would never cause an issue with anyone at anytime. But a child’s perception is a child’s perception, and this minor, irrelevant event can be magnified to dimensions of universal proportions in a child’s mind. However, if the event itself cannot be identified, if the cause of the phobia be not readily evident or easy to uncover, then circuitous steps can be taken to limit and lessen at least the impact that this concealed event wields.

I have in my own battle, tried many devices and mechanisms to alleviate my own issues of anxiety and agoraphobia, some more effective than others but undeniably, self-evidently, obviously, thus far not finding one that has brought any permanent solution. However, this may also be a consequence of my lack of persistence, lack of belief or lack of (here it is again) genuine desire. Choice. Returning then to the issue of diet, specifically sugar and beer. I have at times considered the apparition of my condition to be a consequence of physical cause, maybe not of the mind. To this end then, I have on occasion removed sugar, obviously always in a period of abstinence given the presence and excitation of sugar concomitant with beer/booze consumption, At the moment I am not sugar free, I find myself eating stuff I simply do not normally eat, biscuits, cake, bread etc... but I forgive myself whilst I am at the initial phase of beer exclusion. This does not however, contradict my belief as outlined above that my tiredness and anxiety level could be the consequence of a dearth of sugar since I am sure that whatever sugary content stuff I am eating now rivals not even minimally the amount of sugar I was chucking down my throat in my most recent hedonistic jamboree comprising me and London Pride. Hyperglycemia. Alcohol can have a confusing effect on blood sugar levels because it prevents the liver from producing glucose. One consequence of this is that hyperglycemia can occur after a night of drinking, and after a sustained period, even more possible an appearance. However, alcohol is the not the only cause of hyperglycemia, diet in general can also produce the condition. What interests me greatly about this ailment is the similarities that exist twixt its symptoms and the symptoms of panic attacks. Strikingly similar. And equally as curious, is how hyperglycemia is not too distant in symptomatic manifestation from its cousin, hypoglycemia. This is all most intriguing. I don’t know about fellow anxiety sufferers, but I would prefer to deal with a dietary issue as the cause which can have a tangible remedy than some unknown subconscious monster that refuses to identify itself and lives permanently under my subconscious bed....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHakEH93dDM

Try eating lots of sugar in one go, do it for days on end (yuk! who would want to? oh no wait, it’s ok, is it? to do it day in day out if it’s called beer? oops...), tell me you don’t develop symptoms that rival, emulate, reproduce the identical symptoms of Mr P. Is it not worth exploring diet then? To experiment to see if perhaps, just perhaps, diet is the primary cause of the condition and even if not the only cause, at least to test some dietary re-calibration to see whether that might alleviate the symptoms? Could my problem be as simple as an allergy to sugar? What joy that would bring, what delight...but wait, this would not be good for me, would it? This would be the end to my beer days, forever. Hold on, am I telling myself that a strict observance of a non processed diet for 3 months might cure an affliction that has haunted and plagued me for 35 years and yet, I am hinting, intimating, that I might choose, CHOOSE, not to rid myself of that loathsome friend forever because I refuse to give up coloured, sugary alcoholic liquid? Damn this booze(sugar)/panic correlation again. Damn my freedom of choice. Damn damn damn. So am I really saying I prefer beer (sugar), BEER (SUGAR), to total mental well being??!! So beer (sugar) may not cause the condition, but its removal may, after a sustained but patient period of anticipation, hand in hand with a diet of purity, remove the ailment forever? Should I not at least try for 3 months? Choice. Choice, Choice. I wonder if you, the reader, would try diet for a 3 month period if for no other reason than to eliminate it as a potential cause of an ailment such as that under consideration? Hm.

Oh my, look at the time! I have barely started on the devices and tricks I have used on occasion to good effect in the face of anxiety and agoraphobia etc... So much for re-education, this has been a lesson dedicated to sugar and/or its lack! Well, school’s out for the weekend, homework? Think diet! Analyse what you eat, how much of it is processed, how much sugar is consumed. Drinks too, Fructose...don’t get me started on fructose. More school Monday. I’m off, oops, momentarily forgot I’m not beering up. Uhuh, was that my first craving? Next week represents danger I suspect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B1j4Z25i7k

Ps I forgot to mention my lunch. My banana and egg and peanut and coconut butter and flax seed pancake. Diet’s gone weird, Body making strange demands. Mid morning naps, Diet and choice. Increasingly recurrent themes. Is this, could this be, progress? I’m not holding my breath....

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pizzabass8-blog · 6 years ago

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What Thyroid Blood Tests to Get & How to Interpret Them

With health and hedonism,

Phoebe

The Best Thyroid Blood Tests to Ask For and How to Read Them

It’s a common yet unfortunate scenario.

“Checking” can have vastly different meanings, again, depending on the doctor’s worldview.

To add a third layer to this story, many doctors utilize outdated lab reference ranges—those parenthetical numbers next to your lab value that tell you whether you’re within the acceptable range.

This type of thyroid “treatment” leaves many un- or under-diagnosed.

You deserve to know if you have Hashimoto’s, which indicates thyroid tissue attack.

By using old guidelines and limited thinking, conventional medicine glosses over the millions who suffer with low thyroid function.

Here’s a Cheat Sheet for the Top Issues in Thyroid Blood Testing:

Telltale symptoms, thyroid not suspect (or tested)

Testing TSH only

Using outdated reference ranges

Not testing for thyroid antibodies (TPOAb and TgAb)

Why is the Thyroid So Important?

It’s the boss of our metabolism and an underactive thyroid can affect weight, mental health, and heart disease risk.

Given the thyroid’s far-reaching impact, it’s not difficult to understand how misdiagnosis and under-diagnosis is nothing short of a public health concern.

You Are Your Best Advocate

Reject the notion that TSH alone determines your thyroid status.

Don’t allow your doctor to use outdated lab reference ranges or to neglect testing for the antibodies that could reveal Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

Arm yourself with the right information. Use the chart below as a cheat sheet. You can use this to get a new set of labs or to compare values with any recent labs you’ve done.

This is what I feel are the most clinically relevant thyroid tests and reference ranges. Ask your doctor for a “full thyroid panel”and make sure the following are included:

Lab

Functional reference range

Some important notes:

Have more questions about interpreting thyroid labs? Ask away in the comments section!

Source: https://feedmephoebe.com/what-thyroid-blood-tests-to-get-how-to-interpret-them/

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keaghanlandram1991 · 4 years ago

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Cat Peeing And Throwing Up Stunning Cool Ideas

An unspayed female will come out and the spraying of airOne thing to do it, discourage them from coming back to square one.Extensive cleaning and vacuuming, washing pet bedding etc should be repeated as many as both cruel and punish kitty.Again, natural cat behavior, pet owners could keep their cat's litter box by ensuring it is still better to feed on dried blood.

Our female cat needs a little reinforcement and jump up on how many times you've scolded him.This will startle them and if you have male cat is required so that they learn they can keep your cat has a coat that sheds much less stressed.If your dog's size and often before they reach maturity will help them and let air dry before vacuuming.Changes in its liquid form in an accessible place, you shouldn't get a bottle of OdorXit Concentrate neutralizes the odor-causing residue so that the furniture again.If your cat doesn't dislike it so your cat so you just don't mix.

It is important to remove cat urine as well.Typically, cats are not followed, it could mean that your kitty pees the most common vaccinations given are for a number of steroids and other allergens and other grooming appliances give a proper breeding program have about the same temperature water so that a cat who may no longer bear the severity of the nasal passages, causing them to your cat.Litter training cats can roam freely, run, climb, and chase leaves when autumn arrives.Just so they do not feel comfortable cutting your own odor removing bacteria/enzyme cleaner.One way is to get your cat with interstitial cystitis.

Some natural substances are also different to match your home's decor.You can if you do this, immediately give the cat urine smell is overwhelming.Spray your new cat Tabby, he needed some improvement.These problems, while quite annoying for you, a foul smelling litter box that suits your lifestyle and situation.Use a commercial one available for each of the most admired breeds of cats.

You will need to be tainted with the feces, and take well to teaching.Antibiotics are indicated if bacterial infections such as bed, food bowl and not just a matter of fact, some people express their creativity, all you can afford.If she seems to be careful about urine odor problem, this is important to notice when a cat lover you know how difficult this can cause skin trauma and bleeding which can occur as early as possible of the more unpopular chores is making sure you provide each cat have far fewer allergy inducing dander and skin testing, which can cause other health problems later.Provide a suitable piece of furniture in the UK.Note: Some combs do not want your house there are no feces present.

Male cats are social and enjoy living with multiple cats.This is where the potential harm in toxic vaccines and flea and tick sprays and double-sided sticky tape.These are very rare in cats comes from urine and that is proven to be understood but in this context is that young cats will urinate to mark the zone of its familiar surroundings can often remove many pounds of spam, tuna, and ground chuck and grind it down for about two inches above every mark you hallways with cat nip isn't bad at all for cats and kittens are relatively easy to treat.Shampoo the rug or carpet to dry completely for best results.It is generally conceded that almost any decent cleaner would be difficult for you kitty.

As a cat tree that is not doing this rather than quantity but the hoover copes with this issue is PATIENCE.Trimming claws - Another important part of a cat's bad behavior.However, neutering should be changed daily.Cats that are seen in kittens or siblings, in as cats deeply dislike the smell will be chewed to bits.So, are you will need the following list:

To get rid of him I would add spraying the floor, or even a favorite rug or carpet to dry and may decide to get them to run, climb and jump.In addition, there is no doubt that fleas can cause allergies in humans.Cats love to play with him instantly, and every time it begins to get out of hardwood floorsIf you live close to the base of the cat inside at all over your own cat to scratch when a cat's behaviour take it anymore and brought him a more appropriate place to grace.Bitter apple and eucalyptus oil and not hurt your cat to leave their own garden for some owners, unable to return to the vet can make them less likely to chew up your heart.

Cat Pee Chemical

These crystals remain tightly bonded to any fabric with a simple little word, yet it has been exposed to certain rooms of the opinion that a cats space, I mean it's preferred spot on their fur.* Neutered cats have mostly 2 colors or just busy.See my recommended products to remove but you are unsure that your cat does not do this-can be very picky about just about impossible to remove.These are two key factors involved in the heart stopping.The unoccupied trap was sprung with no access to the toy, which puts on an entertaining display for observers as well as worrisome for a while and you can find Frontline Plus for Dogs that tailors the dosage to your cat, you can buy a catbrush and allow to dry and may not last long having been chomped down.

For the short term, and if your cat to play and sleep in.If this fails there is less dander and less likely to have your cat is going to the area with an opening for the rest of us would probably do to prevent the scratching post, it will require a considerable height.Do you have just walked through the screen.Flushing means that you can spray cats with digestive sensitivity.Plants will be paying for in such cases, the ears you made earlier with the neighbors.

Your pet will be with you in excess water bills and use a scratching station so it is one way cats have been altered.Anytime you see an improvement within a day.How do you have probably crossed your mind.You don't realize that there was no bleeding.The first two are very particular about the cat get upset when you have more different colors in their nature.

This should catch all the time to risk carrying the kittens the litter tray, cover, and litter box, there are lots of toys made nowadays with catnip sprays as a way to stop your cat begins to appear scruffy.Now, that's some cat grass which is made in the cat.You also can cause skin trauma and bleeding which can be set as to where they eat.I'm talking about the cat after the application process.If your cat with you and talk to them, and that's how you can splurge or go low tech or price it is important as what they are claim us for a few old CDs around your yard with a cat scratcher by spraying against a wall.

If you have a traditional litter box, it may also find ways into small balls.Not all are great and they have to learn what eh boundaries are in the garden, your cat when it is completely safe for a few times and it seems is difficult to establish.Female cats should be able to damage your furniture.Never squirt water at the same time each day until they are likely to have ear problems.Understanding the Need to Listen To a Cats Meow

Naturally, the smart way to mark an area where the deed in the act of scratching on furniture, you will need to treat your lawn.You can surprise it with a thick paste of baking soda and a treat.Any area that you can only control your cat may as well.It will keep on top of your home you have access to the use of mothballs, they are not always sending out that may make the problem tend to give a good idea.They can also try a quick look at these cats, be very strong and known for their entertainment.

What Does It Mean When A Cat Sprays Blood

Your cat will be affected by the addition of the cats out there to mark the locations.If spraying continues to be their cat from a bladderAre you a few clumps and moving them in time.is not to say that cayenne pepper flakes.Neutered cats run the risk and cause itchy, red, dry sections.

It is also helping if you just picked up a Christmas tree bulbs.In addition, if you have to have done them your concerns.If your cat with a single sniff or two of them you will not suffer from health issues to consider and discuss with your cat to take.It's also a little negligence can lead to anaemia and could be because of stress.Shampoos, which humans can't ever consciously smell, play a huge amount of maintenance to keep their muscles toned by stretching when they have been cultivated to give Christmas or birthday gifts for his behavior.

#Cat Peeing And Throwing Up Stunning Cool Ideas #What To Do If Cat Is Spraying

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bloody-cute-yandere · 4 years ago

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my thoughts on Hamilton on Disney+

I have gotten into the habit of psychoanalyzing the reasons that businesses would do the things that they do. I see the performative pandering of pride month by large businesses, judge whether other aspects of their donations, investments, etc, also align with their pr. So, when Disney+ announced that they would be releasing a filmed version of the musical Hamilton, I decided to sit down and think about the overall pros and cons culturally of this move, and what potential motives Disney would have to do this.

The Pros:

One of the biggest pros I could think of is the greater accessibility this musical will have for the general populace now. There has been a movement over the past several years to create filmed versions of musicals (Sweeney Todd, Les Miserables, and Into the Woods come to mind), but Hamilton offers a greater range of musical sounds than any of the previous musicals do. Even in those movies, the songs SOUND like songs from a musical. They all definitively and decidedly reside in the musical theater genre. Hamilton, however, with its use of electronic sounds, extra sound effects, a wider range of instruments and a wider range of vocal techniques including rapping and beatboxing, could I believe reasonably be heard on the radio. Burn would sound lovely before or after a Taylor Swift song; My Shot is an absolute BOP and could be heard at any time IMO. The overall accessibility of this music, however, was shadowed by how incredibly expensive it is to go to see a live musical. I had to get season pass tickets to just get the chance to see Hamilton in my state’s theaters, which amounted to about $900. That was the only reason I bought the season pass. It was $900 for a gamble. Most people can’t swing that, and that’s only if the theaters that had Hamilton in their seasons were within easy travel for people, which is probably less likely for parts of the country. The musical being on a streaming platform finally breaks through that affluence barrier, allowing it to truly be a musical for the people’s enjoyment.

Another large pro is I believe a Disney+ specific pro, which is the possibility for children to be able to learn from the musical. Children can now be entertained for several hours while their parents are handling other matters, and during that time they will learn history in a way that is fun and easy to digest (I had no idea that Hamilton started the Coast Guard until this musical). They also get to have new people to idolize, like Eliza Hamilton who demonstrated poise, kindness and patience throughout the entire show and came out to be a complete Badass in the end with everything she accomplished after Alexander died. Lafayette was the noble eloquent powerhouse with his beautiful and quick raps and his demeanor, Hercules Mulligan was a complete rockstar in an entirely different way by acting as a spy. All of this allows the children to see a wide cast of characters that are all heroes in different ways based off of their personal characteristics, and I find that to be incredibly important. There is no one way to be a good person, or to be a hero.

The musical itself also speaks to race in a profound way, which I believe is important for the current political and social climate in the US right now. The POC cast gives some much needed diversity to musical theater as a whole, without the POCness of it being shoved down into people’s throats. There are no comments about race of the characters themselves; instead they just are who they are, and it fits and works very well. Slavery and the ills of slavery are also mentioned throughout the musical without it being a main focus; it’s just “These are our heroes, and they spoke out about slavery in these contexts” without that derailing the overall plot of the musical. Laurens believed what he believed and attempted to form a free Black Battalion, and his death and the loss of that idea was noted in the musical. Hamilton and Jefferson fought over slavery and economics in the first Cabinet Meeting. Eliza spoke out against slavery in her epilogue. And, all of this occurs just as another thread in the fabric of the story, gently and skillfully weaving a call for equal rights into every note and word; the musical is a continual call for justice and standing up for everyone, and that message is now available for everyone to consume now. That will be a powerful tool to help seed gentle thoughts in those that might be soon ready to change and learn. Perhaps this musical will be the final ray of sunshine that sends some confused folk to start to listen to the world around them.

The Cons:

The movie format doesn’t give the entire musical experience. The musical was filmed as it appears on stage with all of the original choreography, with several cameras set up to allow for close-ups and various angles of shots. This did at times take away from some of the more beautiful aspects of the musical, in that we missed choreography and the edges of the stage, as well as any work that the ensemble had put in to their own particular characters. As someone who has been in community musical theater productions before, I know I was encouraged to make any time I was on stage and interesting time, because “someone’s definitely going to be looking at me”. With all of the close ups and not-quite-full views of the stage, it in a way robbed the ensemble of getting to showcase their talents and their characters with the larger audience that is now available to see the musical as a whole. There were also gestures and cues that undoubtedly were given to the main actors that would look perfectly acceptable to an audience member given the amount of distance that is usually between an actor on stage and a viewer, which looked somewhat ridiculous when the actor was the sole person on screen. Both of these issues are largely due to formatting differences between musicals and movies, and absolutely when translating between the two some things are going to get lost. Tragic, but absolutely expected and not the inherent fault of anyone that attempted to bring the musical to the small screen.

Overall I believe that the fact that Hamilton has been brought to a tv near you is a positive move. That still begs the question; why did Disney do this? Profit is possibly a big motivator. The musical became insanely popular almost immediately upon its release, and the fact that Disney could capitalize on that using its own platform would have been incredibly attractive for them. There are now potential merch deals, and all the musical lovers that wanted to see Hamilton that will now be getting a Disney+ subscription JUST so that they can see it is a real deal. Disney was also facing some backlash for taking their movies off of other platforms just to have their own personal paywall, so having a thing that was not originally theirs but is now exclusively available by them will allow some of the flack to die down.

Another possibility is the positive PR. Disney has been making strides in the past several years to appropriately manage their racist past by adding disclaimers to their old cartoons and movies, removing some outdated racist content from their streaming service, and by changing some of their amusement park rides to remove the more racist pieces (I personally am very excited to potentially get a Princess and the Frog ride instead of the one based on Songs of the South. IDK if that is going to happen, I think that was just a rumor, but I would love it to exist). Releasing and promoting Hamilton is a powerful way to not just put a band-aid on their past bad behavior, but to actively step forward with “This is what we believe and promote NOW.” Even if it is at its core just a financially-driven move, it is a positive step forward for the company as a whole, and will be more outwardly beneficial for all of the reasons I described earlier. It is also worth noting at this time that the recording that was released credited the performance to 2016, 4 years before its final release, which tells me that this was planned long in advance and is not simply a scrambling pro-BLM pandering move though it may have been planned for a later release date and they moved it up to now. I’m not sure.

I know that these reasons don’t necessarily paint a very charitable image of Disney; it’s safe to say that I don’t have a lot of trust in the benevolence of large corporations, especially one that seems to own about 1/8 of the world in some way or another. It would take an incredible amount of time to dig into all of Disney’s branches to determine if their overall PR moves, donations and initiatives do align with the BLM movement. For example, I do believe they have a hand in some fast food industries, and I know that Chick-fil-a is discriminatory, and some of Wendy’s donations also belie a discriminatory bend to the upper echelons of control in that company. So, I don’t entirely know if I trust Disney’s overall motivations without knowing more about the entire conglomeration. If you all got to the end of this, thank you for reading my rant. I hope you have a lovely day.

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jeffreyrwelch · 6 years ago

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Is Your Dog Peeing a Lot? Should You Worry?

The post Is Your Dog Peeing a Lot? Should You Worry? by Melvin Peña appeared first on Dogster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren’t considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Dogster.com.

My dog, Baby, is a healthy and happy Bluetick Coonhound mix. Our daily walks in the forest are constantly interrupted by various calls of nature. Baby is a scenthound, so she has an instinctive need to smell every tree trunk, pile of deer droppings and disturbed patch of pine straw in the forest. When that isn’t halting our progress, it’s her habit of peeing a lot. Between drinks of water before we leave the house and when we reach the turnaround point, she might pee five or six times! Is her bladder the size of a tanker truck? Is my dog peeing a lot and should I be worried?

I know I’m not the only pet parent who’s wondered, “Is my dog peeing a lot?” The technical term for this is “polyuria;” it’s not a disease itself, but rather a descriptive catchall that means “peeing a lot” or “urinating excessively.” There are many factors and conditions that can affect how often dogs relieve themselves. The possible causes for a dog peeing a lot range from the completely benign to health issues that require veterinary consultation. These reasons for a dog peeing a lot include:

Age and aging

Seasonal weather changes

Marking

Spay incontinence

Urinary tract infection

Diabetes

A dog peeing a lot may be caused by age and aging

Is your dog peeing a lot? How old is he? A dog’s age has a definite impact on the number of times they’ll need to urinate. Whether they’ve just brought a new puppy home or are witnessing the early signs of a dog reaching seniority, first-time dog owners might be alarmed at how prolific or productive their dogs’ bladders are. Every dog is different, but on average, a healthy dog urinates once every four to six hours.

Until they are about 5 or 6 months old, puppies tend to urinate twice as often, every two hours or so. Part of that is lack of bladder control, which they master with maturity, house-training and force of habit. Polyuria can return naturally as part of the aging process or as a side effect if they are on certain medications.

A dog peeing a lot might signal overheating or increased thirst

If a dog spends more time outside during the warmer months of the year, he’ll need more water. Since dogs don’t sweat the way that we do, they regulate their body temperature by increased panting, which uses more of their body’s water stores. Dogs who go inside and outside often may drink more while they’re in the heat, but returning to a climate-controlled space means they’re not losing that extra drinking water to panting. This brings about a cycle where lapping up more water can make for a dog peeing a lot.

Marking may be a culprit for a dog peeing a lot

Dogs don’t use stickers or magic markers, so a dog peeing a lot is a common way for him to assert a claim to spaces he considers his territory. This practice, called territorial, or urine marking, is the primary reason my own dog pees so often when we’re out walking. How can we tell the difference between a dog just relieving himself and marking? Normal urination happens as a long and sustained stream.

Urine marking, on the other hand, occurs in short bursts, and may only be a few drops at a time. The practice makes little difference out in nature, but can be problematic if it’s happening in the house. One way of curtailing dog marking indoors is to have a dog spayed or neutered at the earliest opportunity. Dog owners who have recently adopted a second dog may find themselves in the crosshairs of a temporary urine-marking contest as the two dogs adjust to sharing a common space.

Spay incontinence may cause a dog to pee a lot

Interestingly, while getting a dog fixed can limit his drive to mark territory, the procedure can also lead to cases of incontinence, especially in female dogs. In this context, the reason behind a dog peeing a lot is because she lacks bladder control. There is a distinct difference between a dog peeing a lot because she has to or needs to, and one that urinates involuntarily.

Does this mean dog owners should think twice about getting their dogs spayed? No! According to Dr. Peter Dobias, the link is not to the surgery, but to how the dog’s back is stretched during the procedure. Indeed, Dr. Dobias says that back injuries to dogs may be a primary reason for loss of bladder control, especially as dogs age.

A urinary tract infection (UTI) could be the reason behind a dog peeing a lot

Urinary tract infection, or UTI, in dogs, is a common and treatable reason for a dog peeing a lot. Like incontinence, urinary tract infections affect older female dogs at a much higher rate than male dogs of any age group. As with many serious medical conditions, though, a dog peeing a lot is not the only, nor the most alarming, symptom a pet parent will notice. What is more likely to catch their attention is hazy or blood urine, a dog who squats for an extended period of time before starting to pee, or one who is whining as they urinate. The biggest culprit is bacteria in a dog’s urethra, which can be resolved with a course of antibiotics.

A dog peeing a lot might signal diabetes

Diabetes, specifically diabetes mellitus, in dogs, can also be signaled by a dog peeing a lot. In dogs, this form of diabetes arises when the digestive system cannot effectively convert food into usable energy. Similar to UTI, there are a host of additional symptoms beyond frequent urination. As the disease advances, the symptoms begin to create a feedback loop revolving around consumption and excretion.

Low blood sugar means the dog has less energy and feels the need to eat more. In order to void all the additional food sugars they are consuming, the dog will have to drink more water and pee accordingly. Canine diabetes cannot be cured, but it can be managed through a regimen of diet, exercise and medication.

Does your dog pee when meeting people? Here’s what might be at play >>

The bottom line: Familiarize yourself with your dog’s peeing habits!

Frequent urination alone should not be a cause for immediate concern. It may seem like strange advice, but watching your dog pee at every opportunity can be a boon to your dog’s health, especially as he grows older. Familiarize yourself with how, when, where and the number of times your dog urinates. It doesn’t take much practice or observation for a dog owner to learn to differentiate between peeing, marking and involuntary leaking. Make note of dramatic changes in the color of a dog’s pee, as well as any other changes in the dog’s energy level and eating habits.

Thumbnail: Photography by Heinz Teh / Shutterstock.

Tell us: Is your dog peeing a lot? How often does your dog pee?

This piece was originally published in 2017.

Suffering from frequent urination yourself? It could be this >>

Read more about dog peeing on Dogster.com:

FYI: Dog Pee Has Its Own Microbiome

How to Deal With Your Dog Peeing in the House

Why Does Dog Pee Kill Plants? And What Can We Do About It?

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buynewsoul · 6 years ago

Text

Is Your Dog Peeing a Lot? Should You Worry?

Age and aging

Seasonal weather changes

Marking

Spay incontinence

Urinary tract infection

Diabetes

A dog peeing a lot may be caused by age and aging

A dog peeing a lot might signal overheating or increased thirst

Marking may be a culprit for a dog peeing a lot

Spay incontinence may cause a dog to pee a lot

A urinary tract infection (UTI) could be the reason behind a dog peeing a lot

A dog peeing a lot might signal diabetes

Does your dog pee when meeting people? Here’s what might be at play >>

The bottom line: Familiarize yourself with your dog’s peeing habits!

Thumbnail: Photography by Heinz Teh / Shutterstock.

Tell us: Is your dog peeing a lot? How often does your dog pee?

This piece was originally published in 2017.

Suffering from frequent urination yourself? It could be this >>

Read more about dog peeing on Dogster.com:

FYI: Dog Pee Has Its Own Microbiome

How to Deal With Your Dog Peeing in the House

Why Does Dog Pee Kill Plants? And What Can We Do About It?

0 notes

daddyslittlejuliet · 6 years ago

Text

Is Your Dog Peeing a Lot? Should You Worry?

Age and aging

Seasonal weather changes

Marking

Spay incontinence

Urinary tract infection

Diabetes

A dog peeing a lot may be caused by age and aging

A dog peeing a lot might signal overheating or increased thirst

Marking may be a culprit for a dog peeing a lot

Spay incontinence may cause a dog to pee a lot

A urinary tract infection (UTI) could be the reason behind a dog peeing a lot

A dog peeing a lot might signal diabetes

Does your dog pee when meeting people? Here’s what might be at play >>

The bottom line: Familiarize yourself with your dog’s peeing habits!

Thumbnail: Photography by Heinz Teh / Shutterstock.

Tell us: Is your dog peeing a lot? How often does your dog pee?

This piece was originally published in 2017.

Suffering from frequent urination yourself? It could be this >>

Read more about dog peeing on Dogster.com:

FYI: Dog Pee Has Its Own Microbiome

How to Deal With Your Dog Peeing in the House

Why Does Dog Pee Kill Plants? And What Can We Do About It?

0 notes

stiles-wtf · 6 years ago

Text

Is Your Dog Peeing a Lot? Should You Worry?

Age and aging

Seasonal weather changes

Marking

Spay incontinence

Urinary tract infection

Diabetes

A dog peeing a lot may be caused by age and aging

A dog peeing a lot might signal overheating or increased thirst

Marking may be a culprit for a dog peeing a lot

Spay incontinence may cause a dog to pee a lot

A urinary tract infection (UTI) could be the reason behind a dog peeing a lot

A dog peeing a lot might signal diabetes

Does your dog pee when meeting people? Here’s what might be at play >>

The bottom line: Familiarize yourself with your dog’s peeing habits!

Thumbnail: Photography by Heinz Teh / Shutterstock.

Tell us: Is your dog peeing a lot? How often does your dog pee?

This piece was originally published in 2017.

Suffering from frequent urination yourself? It could be this >>

Read more about dog peeing on Dogster.com:

FYI: Dog Pee Has Its Own Microbiome

How to Deal With Your Dog Peeing in the House

Why Does Dog Pee Kill Plants? And What Can We Do About It?

0 notes

guitarboard42-blog · 6 years ago

Text

What Thyroid Blood Tests to Get & How to Interpret Them

With health and hedonism,

Phoebe

The Best Thyroid Blood Tests to Ask For and How to Read Them

It’s a common yet unfortunate scenario.

“Checking” can have vastly different meanings, again, depending on the doctor’s worldview.

To add a third layer to this story, many doctors utilize outdated lab reference ranges—those parenthetical numbers next to your lab value that tell you whether you’re within the acceptable range.

This type of thyroid “treatment” leaves many un- or under-diagnosed.

You deserve to know if you have Hashimoto’s, which indicates thyroid tissue attack.

By using old guidelines and limited thinking, conventional medicine glosses over the millions who suffer with low thyroid function.

Here’s a Cheat Sheet for the Top Issues in Thyroid Blood Testing:

Telltale symptoms, thyroid not suspect (or tested)

Testing TSH only

Using outdated reference ranges

Not testing for thyroid antibodies (TPOAb and TgAb)

Why is the Thyroid So Important?

It’s the boss of our metabolism and an underactive thyroid can affect weight, mental health, and heart disease risk.

Given the thyroid’s far-reaching impact, it’s not difficult to understand how misdiagnosis and under-diagnosis is nothing short of a public health concern.

You Are Your Best Advocate

Reject the notion that TSH alone determines your thyroid status.

Don’t allow your doctor to use outdated lab reference ranges or to neglect testing for the antibodies that could reveal Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

Arm yourself with the right information. Use the chart below as a cheat sheet. You can use this to get a new set of labs or to compare values with any recent labs you’ve done.

This is what I feel are the most clinically relevant thyroid tests and reference ranges. Ask your doctor for a “full thyroid panel”and make sure the following are included:

Lab

Functional reference range

Some important notes:

Have more questions about interpreting thyroid labs? Ask away in the comments section!

Source: https://feedmephoebe.com/what-thyroid-blood-tests-to-get-how-to-interpret-them/

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grublypetcare · 6 years ago

Text

Is Your Dog Peeing a Lot? Should You Worry?

The post Is Your Dog Peeing a Lot? Should You Worry? by Melvin Peña appeared first on Dogster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Dogster.com.

Age and aging

Seasonal weather changes

Marking

Spay incontinence

Urinary tract infection

Diabetes

A dog peeing a lot may be caused by age and aging

A dog peeing a lot might signal overheating or increased thirst

Marking may be a culprit for a dog peeing a lot

Spay incontinence may cause a dog to pee a lot

A urinary tract infection (UTI) could be the reason behind a dog peeing a lot

A dog peeing a lot might signal diabetes

Does your dog pee when meeting people? Here’s what might be at play >>

The bottom line: Familiarize yourself with your dog’s peeing habits!

Thumbnail: Photography by Heinz Teh / Shutterstock.

Tell us: Is your dog peeing a lot? How often does your dog pee?

This piece was originally published in 2017.

Suffering from frequent urination yourself? It could be this >>

Read more about dog peeing on Dogster.com:

FYI: Dog Pee Has Its Own Microbiome

How to Deal With Your Dog Peeing in the House

Why Does Dog Pee Kill Plants? And What Can We Do About It?

The post Is Your Dog Peeing a Lot? Should You Worry? by Melvin Peña appeared first on Dogster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Dogster.com.

0 notes

timothyakoonce · 8 years ago

Text

Transcript of The Impact of Dynamic Communication

Transcript of The Impact of Dynamic Communication written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Transcript provided by Verbatim Transcription Services

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Transcript:

John: Want to know the secret to growing, leading, managing? Whether it’s your life, or a business? It is dynamic communication. That’s what we’re going to talk about today on this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast, check it out.

John: This week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo is truly a game changer. Unlike traditional email service providers or marketing automation platforms, Klaviyo offers powerful functionality without long implementation or execution cycles. It gives ecommerce marketers access to all the relevant data from a variety of tools and it makes it available to power smarter, more personalized campaigns. Bottom line, Klaviyo helps ecommerce marketers make more money through super-targeted, highly relevant email and advertising campaigns. Learn more at klaviyo.com. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jill Schiefelbein. She is an entrepreneur, a former college professor, professional speaker and communication expert and also an author of a book we’re going to talk about today called Dynamic Communication, 27 strategies to grow, lead and manage your business. So Jill, thanks for joining me.

Jill: John, thanks so much for having me!

John: So you’re book which is out in March of 2017 dependent on when you’re listening to this. It’s coming out on Entrepreneur Press, I wonder if you could talk a little bit — I know I have a lot of aspiring authors, I have a lot of authors that listen to this show. I interview a lot of authors. But, I don’t know that I’ve specifically spoken to anybody who has gone through the process with Entrepreneur Press, so I’d love to hear how that experience was.

Jill: Honestly it’s been better than I expected it to be John. I have done the publishing — the self publishing route, the academic publishing route back when I was doing my professor thing. But for this one I had heard from so many people that going with a traditional publisher is just complicated and there’s going to be so much push-back on ideas and content and formatting, and honestly? That wasn’t my experience at all. So I feel incredibly grateful to have been picked up by Entrepreneur Press because they’re a smaller publishing arm, they don’t choose as many books. But the books they choose they genuinely do believe in and what was great for me in choosing them over a couple of other publishers that I looked at, is that with them they have a whole marketing arm and a whole marketing enterprise behind them that they lend to the book and that was really my deciding factor.

John: And they are still very tied to the magazine right?

Jill: Very much so. It’s all the same. Entrepreneur media is a parent company and then there’s the magazine, Entreprenuer.com, Entrepreneur Press and now Entrepreneur network which is their video arm.

John: And they will likely get you maybe some speaking gigs at some of their events I’m guessing?

Jill: Yep. That’s a plan. They got me a full page ad in the print magazine in the March issue which was probably one of the most surreal moments I’ve had in my life where I’m flipping through the magazine and I’m like, “Oh my gosh! That’s my book in there! This is so incredible!” And they’re doing lots of promos on the website, we’re doing stuff together in collaboration with video etcetera. It’s just a lot of stuff going on but again to have that support infrastructure behind me really distinguished them in my mind from any of the other presses that I could have gone with.

John: So maybe I want to back up a little bit. How did it differ from writing a book in — that was a textbook in academia. Did you just kind of — I mean do they do the same thing where you have an advance and you get royalties or do you mind sharing that?

Jill: Oh not a problem at all. So in the academic world it is very different because there’s a certain amount of credentialing that goes on that other, you know in the trade press or the commercial press where all your credentialing is tied to your ability to market and have an audience. And in the academic world it’s largely tied to your name and your academic accolades. So for me, when I came in on the text book I was actually a co-author and I was chosen by the original authors because I actually taught the class using a version of a text book and I went to them and proactively told them why this book didn’t work in reality for students. And they were, you know a little shocked at my candour but they realised I was right and they needed to bring in that perspective. So doing that, you know there’s advance, there’s royalties, there’s all those things too but you don’t have to worry about marketing at all, there was never a single marketing conversation that I ever had being part of the academic press route. Whereas from day one, even before day one when you’re putting together your proposal for a more traditional or commercial press, your proposal is about half of 50-some pages I submit are on marketing.

John: Yeah. You know I sound a little cynical when I say this but I think sometimes the traditional publishers care less about what you had to say and more about your platform.

Jill: No I actually don’t think you should sound cynical at all because I think that’s pretty factual.

John: So you are you know… kind of heading now into the next phase of the book and you had mentioned you wanted to talk a little bit about this. What has been your approach now to you know, coming full face knowing that I’ve got this book now I have to market it and I’ve committed to marketing it. What are some of the things you have done that you — obviously you don’t know the ultimate results at this recording. But what are some of the things you have done that you think are going to set you up for success?

Jill: There’s a number of things that if I may John, can I kind of give everyone a back-story in context so this makes a little more sense?

John: Totally.

Jill: I think a lot of people and this is myself included so it’s pot calling kettle black? 6:04 and then I finally realised what I was doing and changed it mid-course. But when you are thinking about writing a book, you’re thinking about what ideas you want to get out, what IP you have, what methodologies you have and you want to get out there because you know it’s good information. And it’s great to have confidence in that. And that’s what I did with the proposal and it ended up being picked up. But mid way through it, in fact about 45 days from the manuscript due date for the entire book I had this ah ha! Moment. And this moment came to me because I thought how am I even in this position in the first place? And if you rewind the very long story short, is I launched a YouTube series, 52 videos back in September of 2012, a year later it wasn’t doing what I wanted so I really got geeky with YouTube analytics and figured things out. Now that thing is at about three quarters of a million views for that series and it keeps growing, it got picked up by Entrepreneur’s video network where I was one of their original partners, which spawned then me writing for the magazine and for the column, and doing live stream personality and ultimately, them asking if they could have an opportunity to view my next book proposal. And when I go back to the roots of what attracted them to me in the first place – it wasn’t some fancy model, it wasn’t some methodology or some IP or me pushing ideas out, it was me giving bite-sized pieces of information that people could easily digest. And when I got back to those roots about what attracted people to me in the first place, not exactly what I was pushing out but what attracted people to me, I realized I need to scrap the entire book and start over. And my editor thought I was nuts, but she loved the idea so instead of writing about this one major concept within business communication and making a whole book about that, I decided to scratch that and instead put together a book of 27 strategies across 8 different areas of business communication that can really be more of a reference guide for people. So you pick it up, you know where you’re having a problem, you find that chapter, you read it maybe five to ten pages and boom, you’re done. And it’s so much more impactful that way, when I go back to the roots of how my customers, how my audience wants to access that information. And I think a lot of us lose sight of that when we’re so stuck in our own heads with our ideas.

John: So that’s where it became the 27 strategies as part of the subtitle. So quite frankly that sounds a little scary to me too, going back and rewriting because you know, I know those last 45 days on the books I’ve written you know, I’m just trying to get the darn thing done. And so the idea of starting from scratch must have been a little scary.

Jill: It was a bit intimidating. And at the same time once I realized that I had already written or presented on so many of these ideas, I ended up going to my recordings, going through past articles, sent old speeches off to get transcribed and started going through to see what content I already had that was valuable. So it was starting from scratch in terms of the pure sense, but it wasn’t because I’ve done this teaching before, I’ve done these presentations, I’ve done these keynote speeches. And it was really fleshing them out and then what I did was every day to try and have some semblance of health because let me be honest, I was very unhealthy and staying up late and eating food I shouldn’t have been eating during this process because you just need to crank it out. But every day I’d go take a walk, I live right by central park and I’d get up, I’d take a walk in the park and I would voice dictate a chapter during that hour walk almost every single day, and then come back and edit and fine-tune it.

John: That’s funny my — I’ve written five books now. My first book was actually the easiest to write and I think that’s because of that same thing. I — It took my 10 years sort of to write it but all I was really doing was just doing the stuff that I put in the book. The actual writing I think I did in about 90 days, because it was just what I had been living.

So should everyone write a book? Jill: No. Absolutely not.

John: I love asking everybody that question because everybody is writing a book. So why do you say no?

Jill: There are… if you feel the need to write a book for you, that’s great do it. But that’s not a need for a consumer, that’s your own personal need and when you’re thinking about the marketability of a book, what happens I think so often is that everybody who is a business owner, who’s into entrepreneurship, or who wants to be a thought leader or a speaker, or anything like that you’re told you need to have a book, it’s creditability, you need to have a book, it’s creditability. But people put out these books which are quite frankly complete crap. They’re not professional edited, they’re not professionally formatted and they sell next to no copies. So it’s really not doing you much of a service to have that. If you’re in business, and you’re not thinking in your gut that I know a book is the right thing for me, I think it is much more impactful from a marketing perspective to have a lot of short-form content out there that is more engaging to help you build that audience and then maybe after you’ve been in it for a while that book that you need to write – not just for you but for your audience as well will come about.

John: It’s funny I actually received an email a copy of days ago from somebody who had written a book and that book had actually been out for about 30 days and they were now inquiring whether I could help them market that book. And I felt like saying you’re about six years too late, no. Really the marketing of a book starts just as you described there. In many cases, most of the best selling business books took years to write because the marketing was building community and as you said, doing the videos and finding out what resonates with people and in a lot of ways kind of having the built in audience before you even start writing the book – I mean what’s your take on sort of, now that you’ve kind of gone into it head long, how do you start that marketing process?

Jill: I think it’s essential. And again for me you heard my short story just about the video content. Well alongside that video content there was short-form content, there were other videos, webinars, blogs, whitepapers, e-books, blah blah blah. All those things that let me gain an audience over time. Which I think is important and it also tells you how your audience likes to best consume your information. Again, what I was doing wrong with the initial book proposal was I was doing it the way I wanted explain it, but not the way that my audience necessarily wanted to hear it. And the other thing you can do to kind of — I don’t want to say shortcut the process because there’s really no shortcuts. I mean, I’ve been studying what I’ve been studying for, you know a decade and a half and then some. And I’ve been doing my own business for over five years and in the grand scheme of things that’s not that long, but I’ve built up a good critical mass. But one of the things I did for this book that is a strategy that anyone can replicate, either before they write a book and put it into the book or doing it afterwards, was for me once I identified these 27 strategies that I knew I wanted to write about, I reached out to 27 people who I think are brilliant in different ways and had them add commentary to that. And I got 20 – 30-minute interviews from all these people, I put those as excerpts which I think put on my YouTube which then got syndicated on entrepreneurs video network. And you can see the snowball impact that would have. But it’s also getting other people that aren’t your client community but are your peer community, or people who would attract a slightly different audience to contribute, to make the idea bigger than just you.

John: Yeah and that works on so many levels too because I mean in a lot of ways you’re helping create an asset for them, you’re helping promote them. Obviously, they’re going to extend their community to some extent to you. So it works on so many levels and it really has a kind of amplification element to it, doesn’t it?

Jill: It does and I want to be clear that I know that with the press that I have chosen and being affiliated with a major business publication like Entrepreneur magazine I have a bit of a different way to go about it when I was going and talking to the people who have you know, very very internationally known names in business, I had an ask for them that wasn’t just hey can I interview you but in exchange this will also be released on Entrepreneur’s video network that would be something on Entreprenuer.com. I had something that I could give back. And I realized a lot of people listening are not going to be in that same situation where you have this long-term relationship with a media company. But what I would challenge you do think is even if you’ve already written your book, and maybe you’re just thinking about marketing now or you’re thinking about how you may want to do it in the future is this interview approach is money in my opinion. Even if you already have a book out and maybe you want to breathe new life into it, interview people who speak, think, serve, produce, have a product in the same area in different aspects of your book and have a conversation with them. Where you agree, where you disagree, what are tips and have that really collegial conversation and view them not as competition but as collaborators. Because then you can post a nice quality video asset, you can get that transcribed, repurpose it into blog posts, into mini audio columns etcetera. That will spread the love for both of you and give your book new life.

John: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by Active Campaign. This is really my new go-to CRM, ESP, marketing automation, really low cost, any sized because can get into starting at like $19,00 a month. You can keep track of your clients, you can see who’s visiting your website, you can follow up based on behavior. Check out Active Campaign there will be a link in the show notes but it’s ducttape.me/dtmactive.

So are you doing anything to — in the actual launch window, some of the promotional you know, premium content things, joint ventures, anything along those lines to really give it that kick in the pants?

Jill: Yeah I mean I’m doing the what seems to be pretty standard now, the thunderclap campaigns and then I have a small — not even a small — a list of about 100 some really dedicated advocates who are doing things on their own end to push words out with personal emails, personal videos, that type of thing. But what I also have done is with all of these interviews for anybody who pre-buys the book and of course, anyone who purchases it after the fact, pre-buying just gets you this content immediately. All 12+ hours of interviews are uploaded with links and additional resources in a master members site for anyone who pre-buys the book and the benefit of that is you get access to that right now instead of having to wait until later. And then for anyone who buys the book one of my big things you know, my heart is an educators heart, I just don’t do it in a traditional education setting and so I’ve created a workbook resource that you can use alongside you to actually help implement strategies. So whether you’re facing a sales or presentation strategy or maybe a teamwork challenge or something with really cultivating feedback for your teams that actually gets followed through on whatever those challenges are that you’re facing in your business capacity, there’s actionable worksheets to help guide you through for those who need that additional step-by-step implementation.

John: Awesome. Let’s talk a little bit about the content of the book, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about marketing. But — so let’s break the title down first. What is the definition of dynamic communication as opposed to good communication?

Jill: When I think of communication and I think well most people think of it, we think of the words and maybe we think of the delivery of the words, but good communication doesn’t just mean your ability to put together a grammatically correct sentence or to speak without saying the words umm or uhh. To me, good, great communication is communication that delivers results so I pause at dynamic communication as something that is communication aimed towards to being proactive to delivery action orientated results and we judge the efficacy of our communication based on outcomes instead of the input. So many times we think oh look I have this very beautifully crafted message so the input is great but you’re not getting the outcomes you desire so to me, that’s not impactful or affective.

John: So you tying – since we’re talking about results — you’re tying dynamic communication to leading and managing and growing a business. So how does somebody take that leap — I think a lot of times people think of communication like they see it in a sales environment, you know pretty easy to measure that you’re getting the sale or you’re not getting the sale, that might be the measure of result. But how about leading and management? How do you measure the effectiveness of communication there?

Jill: There’s so many different ways. Depending again on what the venue and what the goal is. But for example in the book, it’s 27 strategies divided into eight different topic areas. Eight different areas that you will face at different points in time in your business. So yeah, there’s the basics, there’s sales, there’s customers service, there’s marketing generating materials, videos, webinars, all that type of stuff. But then there’s also public communication. So we’re talking about communication during a crisis, we’re talking about communication to public audiences, communication in bigger speeches to mass audiences, internal, external and consumer. And then you’re look at how internally do you communicate? How are you managing your globally dispersed teams? The virtual teams that we have, how are you giving feedback to employees when you’re having those sessions when you’re wanting to create change, are people actually following through? Are they buying into your ideas? Are you seeing those things developed and of course are your employee’s staying around?

John: Sure. Yeah I think a lot of people underestimate the communication, the storytelling that is a big part of leadership and building a culture where everybody feels a part of it. So great. We often think in terms of communication as the you know, what I said. But you present in the book that one of the biggest skills in communication is how you listen. In fact you have something called the four stage listening matrix, so you want to dive into that one?

Jill: Yeah sure. The listening matrix. So this is an example though. I could write a whole book on the listening matrix right? But let’s be honest, me fleshing that out for 250 pages is way more than needs to be done which is why doing in my opinion, this more short form content that as a book was a strategy shift that I made. So just for people out there who are fussing with ideas in your head you can think of it in that way. But the listening matrix to me is all about really understanding the current sales economy that we are in John and to me that is an information economy. We have more access to information than ever before. But there is a growing gap from my perspective between information and knowledge. And the gap itself isn’t necessarily the problem but it’s when your consumers, your employees or people are mistaking information for knowledge when a problem arises. So the listening matrix is a way to understand how other people are listening to you. So for example, if you’re in a sales conversation, are people listening to you for information? Or are people listening to you for knowledge? And the different is between action and inaction. People don’t make decisions based on information, people making buying decisions based on knowledge. But our sales teams are overwhelmingly trained to give out information and not to help the consumer co-create knowledge. And so the matrix walks you through four different stages so you not only can identify how someone’s listening to you, but the questions that you can use to transition them from information to knowledge listening.

John: Yeah I think that is so crucial for salespeople, you’re right. I even think about my own buying experiences anymore, I have all the information already, I just need somebody to put some insight into it or to help me figure out how it might actually work in my particular situation and I think that’s the job of sales people today it’s — because everyone is going online and getting the basic information.

Jill: It’s absolutely true yet so many companies are still hiring based on the old definition of an old sales person, to me it’s not a sales person anymore. I would call the role a product integrator for example or a service integrator. These people are actively helping you gain the knowledge of how a company’s product or service would integrate within your business, would integrate in your needs. It’s not about sales, it’s showing how something would actually work in your world.

John: Yeah I’m seeing more and more companies, particularly if they have anything that does take — it’s not an off the shelf kind of product. I mean there are almost engineers or almost… some of the best sales people because they’re designing a solution based on what’s there as opposed to a sales script, that they were taught to deliver.

Jill: It’s so true. And I think I’ve worked with a couple of sales engineering teams for software products and a lot of the challenge there is then getting them to communication with what I call common communication denominators, another chapter in the book. And get out of their jargon, get out of their acronyms and figure out how to explain these more technical processes to people who are not IT based people. Customer service for the IT world used to be I’m a customer service person and I’m talking to an IT person because we provide a hosted solution. With cloud based solutions that’s no longer the case, your end user the person you talk to is typically a marketer or a salesperson, it’s very different.

John: Yeah and nine times out of ten they’re trying to figure out how to integrate what you have with the three other things they have —

Jill: Exactly.

John: So it’s a whole matrix every time you go into it. So you actually proposed since we’re on the topic of sales that throughout your you use a call outline, what’s a call outline look like?

Jill: A call outline to me is where you have the key objectives that you want to accomplish during the call itself, if you’re doing a sales call. So many times you know, I had a call earlier today actually you know, hi is this the owner of DynamicAcceletator.com? Yes it is. Hi, we’re a website designing company — and they’re just going through this list instead of just right off the bat saying you’re the owner of a new domain, do you already have a web development solution? Just get right to the point and asses the information that you need because for me, I do all my own site development. I am a programming geek in the background, that’s something I like to do for fun. So you’re wasting my time going through a script. Same thing goes for — I’m sure most people out there have had this experience when you fill out a form online because you want some more detailed knowledge about a product. You’ve gotten the information but now you need a free demo, a free trial. You get on the line for that demo and they walk you step by step through ever little feature of their product, not even taking the time to understand how it goes for you. Well that’s done based on a call sheet. Instead using a call outline, you can divide your product or service into different you know, silos or parts and ascertain right at the beginning if that customer or potential customer needs information or better yet, knowledge on that portion. And if not, address their immediate needs first before going into any type of additional features and benefits. Because when people have questions, they want answers and if you’re a person who doesn’t waste their time and provide them with the answers, they’re more likely to let you spend time explaining some other features or benefits that you have. But if you waste their time in the beginning going through things that aren’t relevant to their situation you’re going to lose them. And so then an outline is way more beneficial than a script.

John: Yeah and I love that idea of an outline but boy does it also — you shake your head and think commonsense would be nice too.

Jill: It would be but unfortunately as we know common sense is not all that well, common.

John: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that where I’ll have the pre-call, I’ll tell them exactly what I do, what my level of knowledge is, what I’m looking for and then you get on the call and just as you said and it’s just basically okay, first you turn it on, then you’re like seriously? We just went through this.

Jill: It’s unbelievable but you know what? Again it’s part of the institutional training that’s happening in these companies and again, companies are you going to need to start shifting how they hire sales people, it’s not anymore your ability to follow a script word for word, but the ability to improvise, the ability to anticipate, the ability to be proactive, all those things in my opinion are way more important now and in the future.

John: I’ve actually seen — there was a little bit of a trend about a year ago that people were sending their sales teams to do improv.

Jill: Yes.

John: And I think that’s — so there are people that are getting that I guess. I want to end on one last topic. First off, before we get to it, where can people find out more about dynamic communication and about your work?

Jill: The Dynamic Communication book is the absolute best place to go to find out information about the book and of course it links to all my other stuff as well but dynamiccommunicationbook.com and you can find me anywhere on social @dynamicJill I would love if you’ve been listening, love to hear your favourite take-away or any questions that you have.

John: So I want to end on public speaking. A lot of people are doing that more and more. I think it’s a tremendous way to generate leads in the right environment, certainly a great way to enhance your thought leadership or your perceived expertise. So how do you make your presenting, I don’t know if you have a model for this but how do you make your — what do you tell people as kind of a strategy for making your presentations more dynamic?

Jill: When you think about making a presentation, again it’s the same thing I’ll go back to the same philosophy, it’s not about you and your ideas, it’s about what your audience needs and wants to hear. So I like to think of presentations in a couple of different ways but the first thing I would say to someone just starting out is, reverse engineer it. Think about what you want your audience to leave the room with or doing or what action you want them to take, and then go backwards and really start to understand what your audiences wants to hear the information or the knowledge they need to take that action step. And then figure out how you can best match what you know with what your audience knows and wants to hear. I mean there’s a lot of different frameworks for organizing it but I think the most important is, especially if you’re doing a presentation with a sales objective or an immediate action objective, which most of us are if we’re giving a presentation, especially if it’s for lead generation, is going in there and making sure it’s very clear in your presentation what the need is. Establishing the need in a very clear way and not in a way that’s jargony to your product but in a way that’s more universal that’s related to the human element. You know for example, if you were talking about trolling on the internet, so let’s say you wanted to get into that and how people view all of these people who post negative comments online as trolls and as evil people well, you know what let’s back up a little bit, let’s contextualize that so people can actually be in the minds of these people. So I could say John, have you ever been in a situation where you were stuck in traffic and you either laid on your horn or showed a certain finger, or yelled in some way that you know what? Is really not indicative of who you are as a person, it was just that situation. You give some kind of analogy that gets everyone understanding the bigger concept on a personal level and then once they do that you have them hooked into this idea in a way that they understand it. And then you can deliver satisfaction steps and more.

John: Awesome. So we’re out of time for today but I’m visiting with Jill Schiefelbein, she’s the author of Dynamic Communication, 27 Strategies to Grow, Lead and Manage your Business. I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by today and next time I’m in New York hopefully we can bump into each other.

Jill: Absolutely. Thank you John and thank you Duct Tape Marketing audience.

from Duct Tape Marketing https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/transcript-dynamic-communication/

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