What you quoted also contains a factual error: hydrocortisone is a glucocorticoid steroid, not a secosteroid. Granted, the two are somewhat related but they aren’t exactly the same thing. Both categories of chemicals do tend to suppress the immune system which might be helpful in auto-immune disorders, but people really should go to a real doctor who can examine them in real life for that sort of problem rather than a snake oil salesman or random people on the internet. Excessive amounts of hydrocortisone or vitamin D can be bad for you.
I work outside a couple of hours a day. We tested my Vit D and I have triple what is normal.
And I can’t take softgels.
What I can take is the medication that my doctor has prescribed for me. And I can work with her to take the minimum amount required to keep things relatively under control.
What are your ACTUAL vitamin D levels? Have you actually seen the blood work numbers?
Also, I find that a higher-fat, lower-carb diet is very important for making vitamin D do its work. It’s much less effective for me if I’m eating high carb, and the research bears this out–if there’s not enough fat in the diet, the fat-soluble vitamins, like D, are not nearly as effective.
As far as the softgels go, I don’t swallow them, I just break them open with my teeth, drink the liquid inside, and then spit out the coating. This works for me, and I think it makes them more absorbable, too.
Of course I have seen the numbers. I don’t remember what they were at the time but there is good evidence that I have plenty of vit D.
Seriously, I get it. I have a disease that is impacted by my diet. I really do. I have spent three years trying to come up with the right combination of micro and macro-nutrients (with both a dietician and my doctors) to minimize the effects as much as possible.
We’ve tried extra vitamins of all persuasions (including tanning for vitamin D) and they have had some effect but they couldn’t ‘cure’ it or make my life liveable.
Yes, if I had a minor case of Crohn’s or if I had less triggers, I could be ‘cured’ with diet alone. I don’t. I have a very serious one. I am triggered by a lot of things (including stress which is not eliminatable either).
So, I take my medication every two days. And I can actually have a life that does not require me to be within 10 feet of a toilet.
I had an abscessed tooth flare up on Tuesday, and have been on hydrocodone almost constantly since. Since posting under the influence is against the rules, and also a bad idea, I haven’t been on the SD. Now, however, the tooth is pulled, the antibiotic is working, and I’m able to face life with nothing more than a couple of Advil in me. And tea, lots of tea.
I’m overweight. Even when I I was skinny, though, I didn’t like to answer the door to random people, most of whom want me to buy something, give them money, vote for them, or go to their church. Or some combination of the above. What’s more, they insist on waking me up. I generally sleep in the daytime and I’m active at night. This means that random solicitors/beggars are going to wake me up. Same things goes for the phone…I hate answering the phone, even though it’s right here on my desk.
Now, if I know and like the person at the door or on the phone (I say “and like” because I know my in-laws, but I don’t like most of them), then I’m friendly. Otherwise, I’m apt to growl at anyone who disturbs me. This isn’t because of my weight, or my arthritis, or because I’m playing a game and I can’t pause it (though these things might be a factor) but because I’m a misanthropic grumpypants who really doesn’t like people very much as a general rule. And this has always been so, no matter what my weight. I just don’t like people to disturb me when I’m absorbed in something.
If they sunk “lots” of money into just buying a dog, it’s highly likely they overpaid to a puppy mill or designer breeder, but that is beside the point. Given human nature, I doubt it happens often that someone would pay a lot of money for something and then neglect it. Also, people who get purebreds usually intended to get a dog, and usually that dog. People with mutts seem to end up with them on a whim.
This is something that never ceases to amaze me. Dogs are simple creatures - a Pug doesn’t know that it’s life could be “better” (and no, it doesn’t live as if it only has one lung) but people swallow the HSUS/PETA propaganda and demand that Pugs no longer exist. Even tho a well bred Pug will have a long happy life, snoring away every night.
Yet on the other hand, they see nothing wrong with people knowingly bringing children into this world who will suffer from obstructed breathing their entire life. I am one of those genetically flawed people, the structure of my sinuses and other airways have been wrong for as long as I can remember, probably from birth. As were my fathers, and my second brothers. Why is it OK to keep producing faulty children, but dogs all have to be perfect? I know that I could have had a better life - a Pug doesn’t.
You can’t know that, nobody does because extremely few people xray the hips on mutts. As I said, hip dysplasia isn’t a breed thing, it’s a dog thing - it even occurs in humans.
Yes I should have said undesirable recessives. However, the point is the same - recessive traits are not expressed nearly as often as dominant traits, so spreading a recessive for a health problem thruout a population by outcrossing everything means that it will take longer to discover that recessive. That is why the popular sire syndrome you mentioned earlier can be such a serious problem, if he carries for some serious health problem recessively - it could be generations before anyone finds out and by then he could have hundreds of puppies on the ground.
Well, there’s a new one - being told that being responsible enough to do health checks on breeding stock is not ideal. Anyway, “the trait” is widespread in dogs, not “a breed” and it isn’t cost-effective at all. It costs me several hundred dollars to health screen a prospective breeding dog, and I also screen pet puppies on some things because in those cases the status of the pedigree is more important than the status of an individual dog. And that is how we get to genetically healthy dogs - for example, I haven’t had a dog x-ray dysplastic in almost 20 years and I have never had a dog be symptomatic until well into old age.
Only if he’d been fat, and even then maybe not. The major reason that he didn’t have symptoms was because the rest of him was very well built, he had good tendon strength and he had decent pain tolerance. That is the only dog that I personally have had who x-rayed dysplastic, but I’ve been breeding for over 30 years and I have never had a buyer who reported their dog was lame. I am quite sure that not all of them would have x-rayed clean, but none were affected which is what matters.
Again, I am talking genetic health only. You would not know if a mutt’s sire was dysplastic or his dam went blind at three. My mother had a little mix - his mother was part Poodle and part something else, his father unknown - who went blind at an early age, and he had severe arthritis in his front legs. She had another one that might have been part Sheltie but that’s just a guess because she came from the pound as an older puppy - she was healthy into old age. Mutts are a complete crapshoot just are those cute little puppies in a pet store.
We must live on different planets. Some people treasure and care for every little thing. Others spend lavishly then neglect their status symbols. I’ve never noted a correlation between purchase price and willingness of the owner to perform maintenance.
I didn’t say pugs shouldn’t exist, I said that the breed standard necessarily results in a dog with obstructed breathing. The kindest thing would be to change the standard to something less smooshed in the face, with a longer snout.
Ah, yes, back to curlcoat’s eugenics program…
Hon, if your face and sinuses were deformed to the extent a pug’s are the medical establishment would have prescribed massive reconstructive surgery for you at a young age.
Dogs don’t have to be perfect, but while we are breeding them we should breed traits that make them more comfortable, not less. There’s no excuse for some of the handicapped travesties breeders put out in the name of fashion. A little more snout and a little less human ego would go a long way to making the pugs of the world healthier and better able to breathe. That’s a long way from saying abolish the breed.
One only has to look at images of dog breeds from the 19th Century side by side with 21st Century show champions to see how distorted some of these animals have become compared with historical norms.
More excuses - German shepherds have long been know to be more prone to hip displaysia than other dog breeds. I know responsible breeders are trying weed that out of their bloodlines but squirm as you might, it IS a problem of the breed.
I’m entirely in favor of those breeding to working dog standards and elminating genetic defects, but there really does exist a show-strain with a sloping back that has terrible problems walking and is a product solely of human ego. These poor dogs are deliberately bred to be that way by people claiming to be responsible, and not only are they physically incapable of performing any form of work for which the breed was originally developed, they are incapable of walking normally or playing as able-bodied dogs can.
Actually, you’re better off getting a mutt from a shelter rather than a “purebred” from a pet store - the mutt in the pound is more likely to have had a health screening and be kept in clean conditions away from animals that are sick. The pet store dog is likely from a puppy mill and we both agree those are a little horror shows.
As a family we never bought any of our dogs. We went to the humane society or pound and picked up animals discarded or abandoned by the irresponsible and gave them a loving home (we also neutered them - it’s not like there’s a dog shortage). Our mutts routinely lived past 12. My last dog lived to 14. At the end she had gone deaf and blind but that was in extreme old age. We never had a problem with hips, back, or weird disorders in the mutts we adopted. Our dogs got regular checkups, vaccinations, healthy food, lots of exercise, and an abundance of affection. Your mileage may vary, of course, but for someone who isn’t planning on breeding animals a mutt can be as good as a pedigreed dog.
I believe, you, perfectparanoia, but Alnumbersnumbers never will - there’s no place in his universe for a medical condition that can’t be cured by diet alone. If changing your diet didn’t work then YOU must be at fault for not having changed it enough, or in the proper way. It’s another blame the victim game.
Me, I’m thankful we have modern medicine to help folks that require more than just a dietary change to get their lives back.
See, the funny thing is, both my doctor and I are hesitant to take/give pills. If we have a sinus something-or-other, she does cultures before antibiotics. We spent a year trying different dietary changes before she put my husband on blood pressure meds (it’s hereditary). We tried meditiation for my headaches.
All of the alternate approaches we have tried have been good. Heck, the meditation for my headaches works great (if I catch it in time). But sometimes, you just HAVE to take the drugs.
I actually believe that we, as a society, take too many pills we don’t need and that doctors are the biggest problem here. If your doctor works with you to understand your condition and your needs fully, there can often be a non-pharmacutical solution.
Cats, too. Persians used to have nice kitty faces, a bit shorter in the snout than other breeds, maybe, but they could easily breathe. Today, it seems that Persians are not allowed to have snouts, only nostrils…and I think that the breed has one of the ugliest faces out there. Apparently they are very sweet, but I wouldn’t deliberately go out and get one.
