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Friday, May 6, 2011

Meditating on a Raisin

Last night in meditation class, we did an exercise where we each took a raisin and held it in our fingers. We rolled it around, feeling its skin and looking at it. Have you ever looked at a raisin for a full minute? There's a lot more to see than you'd think. And when we held it up to our ears to listen to it, to hear the crinkling of the skin as I rolled it in between my thumb and forefinger? I felt a giggle rise right up inside me.

What is the point of a meditation on a raisin? And what does it have to do with Hemochromatosis??

In the realm of emotions, there are 'tones' if you will. They are not unlike tones in music or color theory. Very broadly, these tones are divided into three groups: pleasing, displeasing and neutral. The exercise is created to familiarize ourselves with noticing each of those three types of emotions.

Most people at this point ask 'Why do I need help noticing those? I notice them plenty! When I get on the train and someone won't make room for me, when someone talks on their cell phone in a restaurant...how rude!' and so the story goes...

But this is a little more nuanced than that. What we're asked to do is not just notice the feeling but to stay with the feeling. Most of the times we have a feeling and the next thought is the judgement or the reaction to that feeling. We hear a man on a cell phone in a cafe and we think 'he's so selfish'. Feeling, thought. Feeling, thought. Feeling, thought. It's so natural. Like breathing. Automatic.

Staying with the feeling allows for me to fully experience it and to notice, just observe the range of reactive thoughts I have as a consequence. And to choose which of the reactions I want to take on.

So my experience with the raisin was one that I'm sure is not the norm: terror. Having been newly diagnosed with Hemochromatosis, I am in a state of panic about everything I put into my mouth. I'm afraid of iron and yet iron is in everything.

I'm learning slowly, day by day that I should be able to eat meat by pairing it with things that prevent absorption, like calcium supplements or cheese, tannins, something called phytates, etc. But that knowledge is not tacit yet and my body is still freaking out when I eat or think about eating. So that raisin terrified me.

What was great is that I could see my judgements about the raisin as good or bad for me and could start to question it. I realized that I had no idea how much iron was in a raisin or a handful of them. In the course of writing this blog, I found that raisins are choc full of iron...4% of the RDA allowance for a small box of them, ie a couple handfuls. Who knows what 4% really means for me because the RDA probably sets the required daily allowance for a normal person without hemochromatosis pretty high. The FDA and the medical community love them some iron. We won't get into that now, but I'm learning a lot about how misunderstood iron is in our society.

This is an extreme example right? I can't very well go around refusing to eat. And I can't very well stop eating things with iron altogether as there are other nutrients I'd end up missing out on. But what I can do is pair those foods with other foods that prevent the iron from being absorbed. I'm a little concerned those blockers might prevent other nutrients from being absorbed, but I'll learn more about that.

And what are my choices? Not eat? Eat without any discernment and end up having more frequent phlebotomies? Those are my choices.

4 comments:

  1. I'm with you -- scared to eat. I bought The Hemochromatosis Cookbook and I have a little better understanding. There's a chart in there of foods and the amount of iron in them.

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  2. Hey guys...my mom bought me that cookbook for Christmas, but I have been living with this for 12 years. Honestly, the cookbook was more scary for me than what I eat. I looked up the top 10 iron rich foods and try to stay away from those. Other than that, I modify what I eat with the "blockers". I also posted a blog a few nights ago about some tips I have discovered over the years.

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  3. Thanks Aimee - I have looked at some charts but find that they are not consistently the same from chart to chart...a little frustrating that there's no 'definitive' measure of iron but I guess it's 'close enough for jazz' if you know what I mean.

    A key thing though I've been learning is the difference between 'heme' and non-heme' - I should really dedicate an entire blog to that. But to sum it up, it appears that non heme iron is harder to absorb than heme. Heme is in most meat and non-heme is in most vegetables.

    So for example, though tofu and beef are relatively same levels of iron, the beef would be more readily absorbed into the body than the tofu.

    Anyways, that's how I understand it so far.

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  4. A fellow HH from the DailyStrength Forum sent me this note with permission to post it here...I really enjoyed her very lovely post and helpful information:

    Yes Meg, that's right. Most fruit and veg contains non-heme iron, as you say. For example, spinach contains lots of iron but is safe to eat for HH patients. In fact HH specialists (I'm in touch with the Dutch top bod) advise NOT to try to eat an iron-free diet. Me, I eat what I like, only avoiding red meat and VitC *supplements* (although fruit and veg containing it is fine. Even then I'll have a steak if I really feel like it (although I'm not a great meat-eater in general). I do drink lots of tea (but then I'm a Brit) and take a Calcium/VitD supplement.

    You write very nicely, by the way :-)

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