the_siobhan | an apology and an explanation

Current Mood: maybe I'll just go get drunk.

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an apology and an explanation

First of all I apologize for worrying people.

I'm ok, really. I'm just - upset. And I really really hate crying in front of people. And it occurred to me to be rather wry about the fact that I never used to cry when bad things happened to me because I was so numb all the time I didn't feel much. So now that I'm (comparatively) mentally healthy I'm all over the place with the tears and I hate it.

I guess it's not something that translates well in a short LJ post, and I'm sorry for doing that to you.

Long story short, the stomach thing is driving me nuts, I have Axel pointing out to me that I have been getting more frequent and more debilitating migraines lately, I'm starting to get a little concerned about the fact that have been dizzy every day for the past three weeks - and then today I got told I have advanced periodontal disease and I'm going to lose all my teeth.

And that was just my last fucking spoon.

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*hugs* I'm so sorry. I wish there was something I could do to ease any of it for you. Take care and make Axel give you lots of big hugs and deep neck and back rubs :)

No apologies, lady.
<3 for you, because you're made of all things awesome and rockin'.

Oh wow. :( Yeah, that'd do it!

I positively despise crying in front of people, so I get you there.
I'm glad to hear that you're really ok, although I must say it sounds like things really suck - very sorry about that.

You won't lose all your teeth. Go buy some folic acid and take gobs of it every day. Best is a liquid rinse that you can slosh around your mouth, but tablets work. Chew them and swish the crumbly stuff around. Take about 10x the recommended dose. Within a few days things will be astonishingly better. Oh - that much folic acid may not be perfect for the rest of you, so after you're done rinsing your mouth with it (a minute?), spit it out.

Frequently rinsing your mouth with lemon juice also works, although it's less pleasant. Kills off all those obnoxious flora/fauna enclaves. Does a number on the enamel of your teeth, too. Brushing and flossing, of course, help, but for some of us they're not enough without the folic acid and/or lemon juice.

Sounds to me like what you really need, though, is a quiet vacation (do you do quiet vacations?) I know we've never met in person, but I can tell that you're way cool (besides, A. said so), so if by some stroke of luck you ever get down thisaway (S. Vermont), you're welcome to stay at my house for as long as you want. I'll take you swimming in a crystal clear lake on the hot days, and you can prop your feet up by the wood stove on the cold days and eat fresh baked bread.

in case you're not up for googling it atm, sio, i just poked around, and while it's not precisely the fda recommending folic acid in these situations, the sites that talk about folic acid rinsing for periodontal disease do not seem to be written by complete nutjobs (i am using this in an absolute sense, betonica, not comparing them to you, since so far as i can tell, you're not a nutjob!), and i, ms. western medicine is my friend and i loves it, would certainly try this in your situation. also, folic acid is relatively harmless-- i would go ahead and spit rather than swallow, but looking up folic acid overdose comes up with nothing. call your poison control center if you're worried, but, uh, we don't know what the symptoms are because no one ever complains about it, says drugs.com.

hang in there. you want i should come up there and cut off your head? that'd solve several of your problems.

*hug*

"but looking up folic acid overdose comes up with nothing."

That's 'cuse there really is no reported toxicity of folic acid. It's water soluble and not very stable. I've read homocysteine studies giving 8mg/day (10x the USRDA)[1] of Folic acid to people for 6month with no adverse side-effects. The UL of 1000mcg/day is mainly because high folate can mask the symptoms of B12 deficiency.

Here's an abstract from a study done on a 5mg folate/5mL:

A double blind study was designed to determine the effects of folate mouthwash (MW) on established gingivitis in non-pregnant adults. 60 subjects who had >20 teeth, visible gingival inflammation around >6 teeth, no complicated medical history, currently not receiving periodontal treatment or medication, and not wearing dentures, were randomly assigned to control or experimental groups. Full mouth assessment included plaque scores, gingival colour changes, bleeding tendency around every tooth and experience of disease and local factors. Subjects used 5 ml of MW twice daily for 4 weeks, rinsing for 1 min before expectorating. Experimental MW contained 5 mg folate per 5 ml. The control group used a placebo MW. A detailed 3-day diet record was kept by each subject. The oral examination was repeated after 4 weeks. Initially, groups were similar except that the experimental group exhibited more bleeding sites at the outset, but after 4 weeks, the experimental group showed a significant decrease in mean number of colour change sites (from 70.17 ±12.89 to 56.62 ±17.42) and in bleeding sites (from 48.59 ±24.28 to 29.28 ±19.64) compared with control group (colour: from 66.93±15.27 to 66.20± 18.83; bleeding: from 36.93±16.96 to 39.47± 16.67)p<0.001. Dietary analysis showed that few subjects ate >200,μg folate daily. However, the level of dietary folate did not correlate with changes in inflammation in experimental subjects, r=0.097. Folate MW appears to have an influence on gingival health through local rather than systemic influence.

Siobhan, I can lend you my university account if you want to browse around the literature for more info. If you come across one that the university doesn't carry, you can send me the reference and I can get the PDF from work.
jv

jv

Leafy greens are loaded with folate, especially spinach. If you have a juicer, you can juice a crap load of anything that' s green and swish that around your mouth. My favorite juicing greens are green peppers, Pok Choi, Rapini, and spinach. Romaine Lettuce also has a crapload of folate.

Vitamins A, C, & K which are also in abundance in leafy greens are also known anti-inflammatories.

Intrestingly enough, I just finished reading a paper on the emission of Volatile Sulfuric Compounds from the mouths of healthy people and people with periodontal disease. The emission levels of methyl mercaptan (pathogenic compound) from the mouth of people with periodontal disease was 5x higher than control and the tongue coating was 4x as thick.

Folic Acid and B12 are intrinsically involved in sulfur metabolism, particularly in the breakdown/rearrangement of sulfur linkages. This jives with the Folic Acid reduction of periodontal disease symptoms if it does so by breaking down methyl mercaptan. Swishing around some B12 lipospray wouldn't hurt either I suppose. Brushing the tongue to reomove the tongue coating seems very important too.
jv

All info filed and appreciated.

I love the greens, so that's not bad news at all - are they strictly effective when used topically, or would increasing them in my diet also be helpful?

"I love the greens, so that's not bad news at all - are they strictly effective when used topically

the studies I've read (like yesterday) all deal with topical folate and that dietary folate in the subjects was insignificant. IOW, there wasn't enough dietary folate differences between intervention and control groups to make any reasonable conclusions.

jv

Gotcha. Still, I'm going to go with the "can't hurt" strategy and up my dietary intake while I'm at it.

Cutting off my head would solve all my problems.

It would present the problem of where to put my earphones while jogging though.

I have received megadose folic acid on prescription before to treat depression. It's safer than low dose antipsychotics but does the same job. I was on 10-15 mg a day - and yes, I mean milligrams. They came in 5 mg tablets. I probably still have some around, because I occasionally still need them when premenstrual.

The one danger with folic acid is that if you take any B-vitamin in great quantities, it can knock out your body's reserves of the other B-vitamins. The reasons for this aren't fully understood. As long as you take a good B-vitamin supplement to make sure you don't lose the other B-vitamins, it's basically fine unless you're pregnant (when all bets are off, and the recommended levels of folic acid differ from week to week).

Thanks for the recommendation on the folic acid, I will definitely look for that. I'm also going to start taking calcium more regularly (which I should be doing anyway, since osteoporosis is a problem on both sides of my family, but I'm slack about it.) I have no idea if it will help, but it sure as hell can't hurt.

And your house sounds gorgeous. I just might take you up on that offer at some point.

I have lots of students hanging out in the kitchen many evenings, who seem to agree with you on the gorgeous bit. I will be delighted to have you here any time.

On the health front, greens, mentioned elsewhere, are a great idea. I suspect they don't have nearly enough folate to make a huge difference directly in your mouth, but the folic acid they do have is balanced by other vitamins and flavonoids and things, and so is better for you in general. Eating more greens *and* rinsing (for one minute) & spitting with folic acid (aka folate) is probably an ideal protocol. It sounds like you've got a good handle on the calcium as well - those greens, again, contain some calcium, well balanced with other things (e.g., magnesium) that are a good idea for bone health.

That sucks. A lot. *hug*

You have nothing to be sorry for! Yeesh, everyone is allowed to have a shitty day and be upset about it.

I'm so sorry to hear that. :/ Nobody ever told me that one of the perks of living so long was that our bodies would start falling apart.

I actually understood that. Does that make me healthier than I was, too?

All the physical stuff sucks ass.

Thinking you healthy thoughts

Crap, you deserve a break :/

that is a lot to have on one's plate... i'm sorry you're going through so much

I hope things take a turn for the better

*kicks life in the crotch and demands that it start handing out spoons nowish*

I got a spam mail today entitled "spoons". That made me laugh.

Sorry to hear everything's been so difficult. For whatever it's worth, I hope things improve a whole lot really soon.

Ugh, that's a lot going on. I'm sorry.

That's absolutely awful. I am so sorry. A good cry can really help clear one's head -- figuratively, at least. I hope you can rally after some tears, booze, and rest.

ahhh. *thinks healthy thoughts for you*

And, also, if it's any consolation, I totally burst into tears in the dentist's office last winter, shortly after being informed that I had minor gum disease and needed (yet another) root canal. My thyroid was kicking my ass too, at the time, and yeah . . . that was my last spoon.

My solution was to go to Whole Foods and have sushi.

Anyway, I hope you feel better soon.

Poor, poor!

I'm sorry I wasn't worried about you! Mostly I thought, ah, yes, a sucky visit to the doctor and a dry sense of humor about it. But it didn't occur to me to wonder what the suck was. So now I *am* worried about you.

Poor.

I think that was entirely justified crying-in-front-of-the-doctor.

Aw, crap. I'm sorry. You get older and it's like the fucking warrentee runs out. {{{hugs}}}

You have every right to be upset. What a bunch of crap all at the same time.
You take care now.

I got told I have advanced periodontal disease and I'm going to lose all my teeth

I was told I would lose all my teeth by the time I was 30. I am now 43 and they're all still going strong.

What do they know, etc, etc....

I was told, when I was 23, I had the teeth of a 50-year-old, on account of my grinding.

No dentist since has mentioned it. Not one.
I have minor periodontal disease in my back teeth, where cleaning is nigh on impossible, and I have gotten it under control in the last 12 months (I didn't go to the dentist for years after a second-opinion discounted the 'grinding' thing.

From memory, it can be halted or controlled.

IME, that is. Some know their shit, but the vast majority of them don't. They rarely keep up with literature or new findings & technology. They know little to nothing about the role of nutrition & exercise in combating diseases, even though the literature is riddled with papers on these avenues of therapy.

I could write a book about how my sis and I fought all these dummies over my mom's health care. The doctor who performed my mom's hyperparathyroidectomy never even heard of minimmally invasive radio-guided extraction via Tc99. All I did was google scholar it.

Anyway, when my 1st sifu got into a motocycle accident at 30, and a 4" piece of steel severed all the muscle fibers in his lower back, the doctors said he would never walk unassisted again. He started taking tai chi and learning about chinese medicine. At 46 years old, he is hard as steel and can do butterfly kicks across the gym.

jv

No need to apologize.

I'm always here.

I'm sorry :(
I'd get a second opinion if you can on the teeth thing. Some doctors are just totally fucking looney. I've had doctors tell me there were things very wrong with me - only to have another doctor do the same tests and say "what was she talking about? You're fine."

I hope the folic acid advice given here is also helpful!

She showed me the X-rays. The bone degeneration is plainly visible - some of my teeth are barely hanging onto the bone.

She promised me referral to a specialist though, and I'm going to do everything I can to slow it down.

That's what my front teeth looked like before they were taken out (bone degeneration, couldn't tell what was holding them in they had so little grip on the bone). I don't think there's anything that can restore the bone. But you may be able to stop it from progressing further.

I was told the bone was "melting" due to some unknown congenital disease. I think it actually probably had a lot to do with the vitamin deficiencies, but genetic predisposition does contribute a lot too. Lots of people are vitamin D deficient at this latitude, apparently (and you're even norther than I am). I think the anemia and low platelets continue to make it difficult for me to keep up with flossing (probably has something to do with why it always bleeds so much), but somehow I don't think that consistent flossing would be enough to completely halt this, either.

Ugh. Being out of spoons, do not resort to knives.

I sometimes think it would be so much simpler to just have them yank and replace all my teeth at once, rather than one at a time as they seem to be going. Dentist never has good news for me. I would have thought the vitamin D and all the other supplements would be helping, and I brush diligently with the high-flouride stuff, but no, it's still bad news every time.

Did they teach you how to brush? Apparently I've been doing it wrong for 40+ years. I'm a bit irked that I'm finding this out now that all the damage is irreversable.

Yeah, and they lecture me on flossing, which I can never keep up with on a regular basis because no matter how long I keep it up, it never stops bleeding like crazy, and it hurts too, so inevitably after a few weeks I give it up, feeling that SRSLY, I would rather lose all my teeth than go through that every day for the rest of my life.

Being out of spoons, do not resort to knives.

HA! I need that on a t-shirt! Good one.

Losing my teeth is my worst nightmare, so I entirely understand why you're so upset.

Do try the folic acid thing - you never know.

Mine too. I'm positively phobic about it.

I'm definitely going to try anything that might work. I really don't want to have to wear dentures.

Wow. I think that a cry was totally called for in a situation like that, however I can completely understand feeling like a heel 'cause it was in "public." I vote you get a second opinion like has been mentioned a few times above, and maybe see if the folic acid thing does help at all? Good luck with it--and We're sending healthy/healing thoughts your way.

One doc once told me that Natasha would be blind by now because she lost 60% of her vision in less then a year. We got a second opinion, a better eye doctor and while her vision is still quite poor without her glasses, it's actually *better* then it was in the past. Doc's get things wrong, sometimes they say things to scare us, other times, well, it's just what *they* see and someone else may see it differently or have a solution.

*hugs*

Again, Good Luck and healing thoughts.

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an apology and an explanation

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Folic Acid

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"disturbing"

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Doctors are Dumb

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