Day 5 - A Quiet Day

No treatments for Tammy today, so no worries about gross stories or video clips ; )

The big news for today was...  TWO meals!  Yay!

After the 7:15am stretch class, we came back up to the main centre for breakfast.  Brekkie started off with a bowl of fresh cut fruit [I missed you, fruit!] with sheep yogurt [surprisingly, yum!] and some ground seeds/nuts, bee pollen and some kind of breakfast herbs powder.  We also had some coconut oil and milk that we could add to the whole show to taste.  For the non-eaters, it was a virtual culinary paradise.  Though I've not missed a breakfast since I've been here, I very much enjoyed the fruit based meal as a welcomed change from the poached eggs, veggies and cheese that I've otherwise had.  (I know, I know, how have I suffered through this?!)

The group, ready to riot if the meal didn't come shortly!

As enjoyable as the fruit was, it was only the first half of the meal.  Much to the guests' delight, next came a pair of poached eggs, each one on a slice of tomato, topped with fresh cilantro/macadamia pesto that Nita demonstrated yesterday and two generous wedges of avocado. A great start to the day, leaving everyone eagerly looking forward to the lunch 'performance'!

Yesterday when we met with Toby we had decided that Tammy would attempt a short steam bath today at 10am to see what she could take.  But for most of the morning since getting up and well past lunch, Tammy felt more weak and tired than usual, so we took a pass for now.  Instead, I headed down to the gym for a bit of a weight workout while Tammy tried to nap and relax.

We'd love to include more pictures on the blog but unfortunately, we forgot our camera battery charger at home!  We've ordered one here in Australia for about $25 yesterday but weren't sure when it would arrive... we hoped it would be here before our 4-day break when we'll get to head out into the area for a bit of sight-seeing.  When I went to the front office just before lunch to let them know we're expecting a package sometime, it was there already!  So, more pictures and video in the future!!!

Lunch was a wonderful greens salad with tempeh and 'activated' cashews.  Very nice, especially since Tammy had a bit too much on her plate and I got to finish it : )

Tammy had another productive empowerment session with Joanne and then Tammy and I got to talk with her a little bit afterwards which was also insightful and helpful.

At 6pm it was back to the kitchen for broth, Tammy's protein shake w 2 raw eggs, a bowl of soup with a couple of slices of bread for me, and then the second part of the Body Chemistry lecture by Toby.  Tonight's topic was the endocrine system.  Toby talked about the function and dysfunction of some of the major glands in the body including the thyroid, adrenal glands and the pancreas.

He told an interesting and surprising story about a lady who came to LVS with high cholesterol who had been a strict vegan for the past 2 years.  Ideal range for cholesterol is apparently between 3 to 6 (whatever the units are...) and this lady's cholesterol was 8.5!  She had seen doctors for months and had used drugs to help control the cholesterol but it had only come down as far as 6.8 and her doctor wanted to get her levels below 4.  But because of side effects and general aversion to so much medication, she didn't want to simply increase the doses and sought alternative perspectives, including from LVS.

Here's the counter-intuitive part: Toby had her begin including eggs in her diet, slowly ramping up the number of eggs until she was taking 6 per day!  What?!  So she did the egg thing for 3 months and then they retested her cholesterol and it was 9.  D'oh!

Her doctor apparently got to the point of yelling at her over the phone that she needed to get onto the medication again so she called Toby, not sure what she should do.  Toby reminded her that at the beginning of the egg thing, he'd told her that the cholesterol would go up a bit first, then come down.  He suggested she continue with the eggs for another 3 months and then see where she was then.  She agreed and after 3 months, her cholesterol came back at 4.7!!!

What happened?  Glad you asked.  Apparently, this lady had some bio markers indicating mercury toxicity in her body.  Her high cholesterol, despite a strictly vegan diet, was due to her body ramping up cholesterol production to try to mop up the heavy metal.  By adding the extra egg cholesterol, she was giving her body the right tools to remove the toxicity and once that was addressed, her liver could relax and stop producing so much cholesterol, which it did!

Now, there're certainly additional considerations taken by the LVS naturopaths in treating clients with problems - i.e. Toby didn't just have her wolf down eggs each day and nothing else, I'm sure.  So please don't take this blog post as a suggestion to start eating 3.5 dozen eggs per week.  But this experience did demonstrate to me that sometimes, what seems intuitive to me can be wrong and it's good to be open to new learning!