The road to wellness isn't straight, clear, or predictable. It's a path you forge yourself.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

My Blood

This is what my blood looked like about 5 months ago.  I visited a "Functional Medicine Practitioner".   (More on this visit coming soon!)  They put a drop of my blood under a microscope, then showed it to me on a computer screen.  This is a photo of the print-out they sent me home with: 
As you can see, my blood is relatively healthy.  The only problem is that some of the cells are not quite perfectly round.  Can you see the slightly misshapen ones?  Dr. Cooper says that blood cells function more efficiently when they are perfectly round and that taking fish oil is one thing that can help with this.

The globby-looking things are white-blood cells (except for in the bottom right picture).  I could actually see them moving!  The really bright thing is something that a white blood cell sends out to help fight disease.  (I forget what she said this was called.  Cyto-something or other?  Can a medical friend help me out here?)  This is all what it's supposed to do. 

In the picture on the bottom left, there are two cells that are misshapen  because they are running into something dark.  Do you see this?  I was told that this is yeast!  (You can see a smaller piece on the right of the pic as well.)  The poor cells were trying to do their job even though the yeast was getting in their way.  I kinda felt sorry for them.  I have to say, if you need motivation to eat right, have someone show you your blood cells.  Just seeing them makes you want to give them what they need!

Below is a slightly clearer picture: 
 

The bottom two rows are additional pictures which were taken in negative. They did this because you can see the yeast more easily. The yeast looks similar to the white blood cells in these pictures, but if you saw them live on the screen you can totally tell the difference. The white blood cells move and change shape. The yeast is darker and it floats around without changing shape.  What  you see in these negative images is yeast.  


5 comments:

  1. Shea, I don't see yeast in your blood. I will send you pictures of yeast.

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  2. Link for what yeast in blood looks like
    http://chocolatemoosebb.com/inn/images/yeast.jpg

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  3. Thanks, Lyza! I'm not medically trained so I'm only going by what I was told. Maybe it's a different kind of yeast?

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  4. Shea, for you to have yeast present in your blood you would have a systematic fungal infection. There is no such thing as a systematic infection with mild symptoms. Signs of systematic infection include, fever, shock, respiratory distress, systematic organ failure, etc. You would be a very very sick individual if this was actually yeast in your blood.

    Plus, yeast is very, very tiny. For you to have that much yeast in your blood compared to your relatively large (microscopically speaking) red blood cells, you would most likely be dead.

    I think your quest for health is great if it is making you healthier and feel better about your own health. Just trying to help here!

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  5. Thanks! I appreciate your comments.

    What you describe is something different, according to what I've read and what I've been told. This is a controversial subject. A lot of Doctors in this country don't believe in the possibility of Candida overgrowths occurring. (..but some do, and this is much more commonly accepted in England.) There is a book called "The Yeast Connection" that explains the phenomenon better than I can. (It actually addresses the exact thing you say above.)

    Anyway, even if I don't have yeast, it's probably a good thing to avoid simple carbs and sugars, right? All I can say is that after following the anti-yeast diet, my symptoms have gotten a lot better! :-)

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