When I had a health issue I used to go to my doctor first.

Thousands of dollars in copays later I would end up at the health food store and what they would give me would out-perform the prescriptions.

Now I’ve learned the cheapest and most effective thing to do is hit the health food store first.

I’m going to try Natures Inventory’s Allergy Relief Wellness Oil, a completely organic 100% natural oil to reduce congestion and itching eyes. Check my Sinus Wash Miracle Cure for more great uses of oils.

I’m excited to try the Body Ache Relief.

I meditate a lot and want to see if this Meditate Wellness Oil will help me keep my mind from wandering to dark or trivial things during yoga and morning and evening meditations.

I’m tempted to try the Skin Lightening Formula Wellness Oil - even after treating my liver condition there are some brown spots left.

Or the Liver Support Wellness Oil to help my hemochromatosis.

And an oil for happiness? Sign me up!

How are you going to pick just 5? How am I?

Leave a comment saying which oils you’re most interested in trying and you are entered to win. Subscribe to the Blog Fabulous RSS feed or an email subscription and I’ll make sure to share my results with you.

More giveaways at the Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival!

Post from: Blisstree

Natures Inventory Oils – 5 FREE Bottles

I’m Tracee Sioux and I write Blog Fabulous here at b5media’s Lifestyle’s Channel.

Quick, subscribe to my RSS feed, otherwise what if we never see each again?

I write a lot about feminism and that includes the types of B.S. undergarments and hygiene marketed to women in articles like these: Her Way Sucks, I Prefer His, “Clean” Bikini Line and Mood Shaper in which I actually published a photo of myself in a full body girdle (what won’t I do to make my point?)

I write about feminism and the changing roles of women and how women can create their own power in articles like this: Battle Ground of Feminism: The Home, Logistical Problem with Feminism.

Economics – I talk a lot about economics: Recession or Sanity, Bank Crash – Economics 101 .

Oh, and I’m also an advocate for Girls at Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me (giving away a Portable Hard Drive).

I’m giving away an Ultreo Toothbrush, $149.99, the only toothbrush which combines ultrasound wageguide technology with sonic bristle motion,

• Cleaner — Ultreo has been clinically proven to remove up to 95% of hard to reach plaque in the
first minute of brushing.

• Whiter — Ultreo has been clinically proven to remove up to 95 percent of plaque in the first minute of brushing.

• Healthier — Ultreo has been clinically proven to reduce gingivitis in just 30 days.

• Preferred — In a recent study, 8 out of 10 people said they would chose Ultreo over the power toothbrush they normally use.

More giveaways at the Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival!

Leave a comment by Oct. 31 and you’re entered to win one Ultreo Toothbrush. I’ll announce a random winner on Nov. 1. Really, subscribe so you can find out if you won. This makes a great Christmas gift.

Post from: Blisstree

Ultreo Toothbrush – Bloggy Giveaways

I’m happy to give Gina a gift of skin care products from Jan Marini Skin Research and a tube of Eye Lash Conditioner. They sent me some Enlighten Serum, an Enlighten Lotion, Sunscreen and a tube of Marini Lash Eyelash Conditioner.

I’m super-blessed because right after I my skin started looking better from being bled (yeah, you heard me correctly) Jan Marini sent me the wonderful products to try out.

Does my skin look better?

Yes, of course. I’ve been being bled.

Did the skin care products help?

Well, duh.

If nothing else they made me feel like I was taking care of my skin. After staring in the mirror with consternation and puzzlement from not knowing what was causing all those brown spots (a liver condition called Hemochromatosis if you just got here) it was nice just to pamper and appreciate my skin while using these products.

I’ve even skipped foundation or powder because my skin is looking so good. This morning I actually said, “I look fantastic!” Then I liked how that sounded so I said, “No Really, You really look fantastic today!” to myself in the mirror (that, my friends, is the secret to good self-esteem.)

My favorite is the sunscreen, because Hello – I’m not ever laying out again and I’m going to prevent aging sun damage as much as possible.

But, for some reason applying serum as well as lotion felt like applying magic. Serum sounds like alchemy doesn’t it?

I am most intrigued by the Marini Lash. This stuff promises to make your eye lashes grow back with a proprietary peptide. It retailsfor $160!

Have you noticed eyelids bald with age?

First, stop using Dollar Store Mascara and half of them will grow back on their own.

Second, hello Tracee, stop picking clumps of mascara off while you watch tv late at night and maybe wash it off – this will avoid actually pulling eyelashes right out of your eye lids.

Third, try the two step Loreal Volume Shocking Mascara that I wrote about in this hilarious piece about telling my daughter the lies inherent in beauty advertising.

Can I get them to grow back is a question I’ve never gotten an answer to. Jan Marini says I can. Now, my eyelashes do look fuller. Of course, it has only been a few weeks and you know how when you stare at your face long enough you can’t be sure you’re seeing reality after a while? Can I remember what my lashes looked like before?

So, I’m going to withhold judgment on that for now. I’ll continue to use it and I’ll let you know whether or not they really and truly are growing back in a few weeks.

In the meantime, there is one significant change that I am crediting to this make-up. My adult acne is better. Completely gone, not yet. But, it would seem the birth control pills were actually working for me in more ways than one. Since the vasectomy (and during both pregnancies) my acne has missed those birth control pills. (We’ve also recently started using condoms again – free of any reproductive reason to use birth control and we’re inventing all sorts of ways to bring it back it’s side effects.But that ladies is a story for another day. Subscribe to the RSS feed so you don’t miss it.)

Gina – you lucky duck – I hope this Blogtoberfest gift of Jan Marini Skin Research makes you appreciate your skin as much as it’s made me appreciate mine!

Post from: Blisstree

Jan Marini Skin Research Winner

OK so I thought I had Melasma or Pregnancy Mask but, I don’t.

However, I did learn this lesson. If something is going on with your skin it’s telling you – something is going on with you on the inside. In your liver or hormonally or with your nutrition.

You can waste all the money you want on miracle creams and scrubs and serums – but if something is going on with your health you should approach in from there for the most effective results.

Nancy Daugenti, a sufferer of melasma herself developed Melacor to help herself. Love that.

She was kind enough to send me a bottle of Melacor for review – and then I found out that not only do I not have melasma, I can’t take Vitamin C. So I couldn’t finish the experiment and gave the bottle to a friend.

Happily, Nancy was more than willing to give one of my readers a 3 month supply of Melacor! That’s exciting.

My lucky lucky winner is . . . . Corrin. I’m so glad it’s her. From her comment I can see that she is tired of melasma and I know she’ll be so grateful to try Melacor.

Melacor has Vitamin C, grape seed extract, MSM, Pine Bark Extract, Rhodiola and Ashwaganha Root extract.

Thank you Nancy for providing such a wonderful prize.

Post from: Blisstree

Melacor Winner of Beautiful Skin

I have this skin condition called Melasma or Pregnancy Mask. It’s a condition that often develops during pregnancy or while taking birth control and it brings hyper-pigmentation to the skin, generally causing brown splotchiness. Some dermatologists say it’s caused by sun damage.

I wrote this cool little article on melasma last year called Can a Leopard Change Her Spots? That article has transformed into something I never expected – becoming a board where women from all over the world can share what they know about melasma with 500 comments. The ladies report on which products work to fade the melasma or which products or regimes, laser treatments they try which didn’t work. The participants save their fellow melasma sufferers some money and share their frustrated body image issues with each other.

It is to these sisters of mine that I want to talk to today.

“That’s not melasma,” my doctor recently told me. “That’s bronzing of the skin caused by too much iron in your liver, that’s a symptom of hemochromatosis. It should go away when we bleed you.”

“Really?” I asked.

“We’ll I can’t promise. It should. We’ll see.”

{{{{{Perception shift}}}}}

The symptom of my condition was staring me in the face every time I looked in the mirror – I missed it. My doctors missed it. We all knew I had it.

I have hemochromatosis. I’ve known I had hemochromatosis for 10 years. I’ve had hemochromatosis the whole time I’ve been treating my melasma that coincided with my pregnancy, which coincided with my not treating my hemochromatosis. My OB/GYN, the doctor I was seeing during pregnancy and right after, called my skin condition pregnancy mask (which is the layman’s term for melasma). The timing and symptom seemed right. He knew, of course, that I had hemochromatosis, but he did not know that a symptom of hemochromatosis looks very much like melasma. I haven’t seen my hemochromatosis specialist since before that pregnancy.

So here is what I want to say to my sisters out there who are treating their melasma, spending tons of time and money and emotional energy, and not seeing results – get tested for hemochromatosis.

You may have hemochromatosis. You may be treating the wrong condition. Your skin may be a symptom of something that may, in fact, be life threatening.

What is it?

Hemochromatosis is a mutation of the HFE gene. It’s an inherited disease. There’s nothing you can do to prevent it, nothing you do to cause it, and there is no cure. Around 8% of the population has this genetic condition.

By definition hemochromatosis is iron saturating the liver. Iron doesn’t leave the body properly in patients with hemochromatosis.

Iron is necessary for a healthy life, but too much of it sits in the liver and poisons it and other organs.

There is treatment.

The treatment is to remove blood from the body, giving blood.

They used to use leaches, now they use needles.

Untreated, hemochromatosis can be life threatening.

Women rarely find out they have hemochromatosis prior to menopause because they naturally rid themselves of just enough iron to mask the disease through menstruation, pregnancy, birth and lactation. That’s also the reason I hadn’t been to the doctor in a while – my body was using gestation, birth and lactation to rid itself of iron. Now the baby is over 2 and it’s time to start being bled again.

If you do not discover you have hemochromatosis and it goes untreated there is a high risk of liver disease, heart disease, diabetes, and others.

If you find out you have it early enough and it is properly treated, those who have hemochromatosis will live a long and healthy life.

I found out I had it in my 20’s. I am lucky. I found out in such a lucky way, after being misdiagnosed with both depression and mononucleosis. My doctor was trying to get me to up my anti-depressants.

“I am not depressed, I’ve got a great job and I’m happy about my life. I just can’t stop sleeping. I am so tired I could sleep 20 hours a day,” I told him. “Maybe I’m anemic, I read about exhaustion from anemia in a magazine,” I told him.

“If you rub real gold on your arm and it makes a black mark it means you’re anemic,” I explained as I showed him the black marks from my ring.

“That’s an old wive’s tale,” he said.

“Let’s bet on it. Test my iron levels. I bet I’m anemic,” I challenged.

The quirky bet with my doctor saved my life. I was not right. I was not anemic. But, I somehow, someway – by a miracle really – had asked for the right test after reading an article and illustrating an old wives tale. The test I requested showed dangerously elevated Iron & Ferritin levels. My liver biopsy tested positive for hemochromatosis.

This could be your quirky moment and this quirky moment could save your life (and treat your skin condition).

If you have melasma that doesn’t seem to respond to treatment, please, get a test for hemochromatosis. What you have previously seen as an emotionally frustrating skin condition – could shift into the symptom that points to a diagnosis that saves your life.

Wouldn’t that be a miracle – a shift in perception?

The best way to find out if you have hemochromatosis is to test for the HFE gene. You can ask your doctor to order this lab test if you have great insurance.

The American Hemochromatosis Society website recommends finding out you have this at home, without involving your insurance company. This is a serious diagnosis that could adversely affect your future insurability, they warn.

You can do the lab test from your home through a company like HealthCheckUSA. Just take a sample of your own cheek with a swab and send the results in to find out if you have hemochromatosis. It costs around $200.

If you have hemochromatosis you’ll need to find out your Iron and Ferretin levels with another lab test, Iron Profile, for around $50.

If your lab results come back with dangerously elevated Iron and Ferritin levels you’ll need to be monitored by a doctor and undergo more tests to make sure your vital organs are undamaged.

Post from: Blisstree

Miracle Skin – A Perception Shift

Yesterday a nurse practitioner took 700 CCs of blood from my right arm.

She’s going to do it again next Thursday morning.

And the next and the next. I wish it were in the afternoon so I could work more on Thursdays, I don’t feel so wonderful afterwards.

I have a rare condition called Hemochromatosis.

My body doesn’t get rid of iron properly, so it sits in my liver poisoning me. Very heavily iron-saturated blood can damage the liver, heart and other vital organs like the pancreas.

What did I do to get it?

I was born.

What could I have done to prevent it?

Nothing. Hemochromatosis a chromosomal mishap of the HFE chromosome. It’s genetic.

What’s the only thing you can do to treat it?

Bleed me periodically for the rest of my life.

Thank the good Lord they no longer use leaches.

I got the diagnosis in my 20s, which quite literally saved me from a liver or heart transplant, diabetes, etc. With hemochromatosis early treatment is everything.

When I was first diagnosed they took a pint of blood from me every week for around a year.

It cost me $10 a week in copays. My oncologist/hemotologist did it in his office.

I thought insurance was a pretty dang good bargain.

I was without insurance for around 6 months after I left that job and then ended up in NYC getting phlebotomies (that’s the medical term for being bled) for another 6 months and my copays were again, $10.

I went 3 years without having to get phlebotomies due to natural iron depletion from pregnancy, childbirth and lactation.

The next time I needed to be bled, I was on my husband’s health insurance. He still worked for a Fortune 500 company with pretty good insurance. Our copays went up $5 so we were paying $15.

But, here’s where it was dramatically different. I started getting bills for extra stuff. Services that used to be included with the original copay.

They now wanted $15 to test my blood levels to be sure it was safe to bleed me.

Then another $15 for the nurse practitioner to read my labs.

And still another $15 for the phlebotomy itself.

And still another $15 for the doctor to track my condition periodically.

Mind you I have to pay 3 of these bills 4 times a month. So it’s not a $5 increase in copays – as it first appeared.

It was $195 a month for the same exact treatment I was paying $40 a month for.

It became a real financial hardship disguised as a $5 increase in our copay.

Another baby caused another 2.5 year time lapse. In the meantime, my husband got a better job, with another Fortune 500 company.

This time our copays increased from $15 to $25.

Which, doesn’t seem like much when you’re considering everything and you’re basically healthy – “it’s only $10″ you tell yourself.

My iron levels are high again. I must be bled weekly. Emotionally, this is no biggy. It sucks, but I make light of it. I have to do it. So I do it with a good attitude like my mother taught me.

Until I call the blood bank where I want to give my iron rich blood to save lives and they tell me they will charge me $75 a week. “It’s a new rule since we were bought by another company,” the woman on the phone tells me.

Blood they will turn around and sell to a hospital, though they qualify for nonprofit status. Blood they claim to need due to a blood shortage.

Blood the hospital will turn around and bill to the patient.

Everybody taking their cut.

My blood and everyone profits but me.

So 2,100 CCs a month of valuable lifesaving blood will go into the trash.

I can’t afford to “donate” it.

My new doctor wants to order tests – “a liver cat scan to look for cancer, a heart test to look for heart conditions, a diabetes test, and maybe a few others just to be sure.”

All words used to frighten me about the potential seriousness of my condition.

“Is there anything in my lab results to suggest there is any reason to suspect my liver or heart or pancreas is malfunctioning?” I ask him.

“No, everything looks normal.”

“Then I’m not doing optional tests.”

“Don’t you have insurance?”

Every doctor I’ve ever been to asks this question as if insurance fixes the health care inflation problem American’s face. It doesn’t.
“I have insurance, but that doesn’t make it free. I could go bankrupt just paying copays for all these tests. I’ll do tests if there is indication of a problem. Until then I’ll only do the weekly phlebotomies.”

“I want you to get labwork every week two days before to monitor your iron levels.”

Doing the math in my head that’s $25 for labwork, $25 for him to analyze the labwork, $25 for the phlebotomy. That’s $300 a month in copays.

“No. I’ll do lab work once a month and a weekly phlebotomy and no extra tests. We’ll see how these offices and my insurance bills all of these procedures this month and we’ll re-evaluate when I start getting bills.”

A few years ago I consented to a number of “just in case” tests when I was suffering from terrible allergies. “We need to make sure you don’t have a brain tumor, we need to be sure you aren’t having serious inner ear problems.”they scare-sold me. The results? I was suffering from terrible allergies – my self-diagnosis turned out to be accurate about $1,000 in copays later. Fool me once . . .

My brother suggested I take courses to become my own phlebotomist and learn to bleed myself.

It’s shocking to think that our healthcare system has come to the point where I’m actually considering draining a bag of my own blood at home to avoid healthcare inflation. Does that strike you as a reasonable option? Does it strike you as the kind of place you want to live?

Our healthcare industry has become a place where I must be a savvy consumer before I’m a patient. Where I must guard myself against medical up-selling the way I guard against being up-sold the super-sized meal at McDonald’s. The difference being if I falter and order the super-size Big & Tasty I’m out $7 and I’ve got slightly bigger thighs. If I misjudge the necessity of scanning for liver cancer I could die, but if I pay for the unnecessary tests it will have disastrous consequences on our family’s economics.

I question my own medical providers motives and realize the distrust has grown to a point that I think my health and well-being ranks below the medical providers’ profit, the insurance companies’ profit and the doctor’s fear of getting sued.

My health and well-being ranks 4th. My economic well-being doesn’t factor in.

The shift in priorities and the massive inflation took a mere 10 years. The same exact treatments went from $40 a month to $300 a month in COPAYS alone. That’s a 750% increase. I can’t afford the same increase over the next 10 years.

If you’re thinking this problem is specific to me, my specific insurance companies or our specific employers – you are mistaken. Studies show the inflation is across the board over the entire health care industry.

I got a mutation of the HFE chromosome, at birth, that will require affordable access to healthcare for the rest of my life. You might get the heart attack, or a premature baby, or leukemia, or diabetes, high cholesterol, thyroid problem, high blood pressure, or a special needs kid.

Universal Health Care will slow healthcare inflation dramatically.

It will insure more people. Uninsured people are a massive cause of both higher taxes and healthcare inflation.

* When you’re uninsured you drive the costs up for me.

Universal Health Care will increase competition of health insurance companies to offer more services rather than less for the same dollar by opening up the market to the self-employed or the “already diagnosed” by creating larger insurance pools.

Universal Health Care will untie our insurance benefits to our employers so we don’t lose our insurance if we become unemployed, divorced, widowed or decide to be self-employed or work on contract. I’m self-employed and I want to keep working this way so I can spend more time with my kids.

Health care accounts for 16% of our entire national spending. It’s expected to account for 20% of our Gross National Product by the time our next President leaves office.

John McCain says we should let The Market, which he implies is as holy and sacrosanct as God, take care of it. The trouble is that The Market has never once decided it’s got enough money. Every single quarter it shoots higher.

Do not confuse The Market with people. It is not people. It is corporations. The Market is Insurance Corporations. The Market is Medical Conglomerations. The Market is a-moral and single-minded.

The Market’s only motive is its own short-term profit.

If you truly, in your heart, believe that The Market is going to decide, as all the millions of baby boomers become simultaneously in need of more medical care and unemployed and more likely to be uninsured, that there is so much business they will lower their prices of their own free will – then I pray you, your kids, or your parents never get sick enough to find out how disastrously wrong you are.

If, like me, you know in your heart John McCain’s theory about The Market fixing healthcare inflation is a big freaking ball of lies and marketing and that the leaches will suck patients dry until we have nothing left – then VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA and Democrat Senators and Representatives who will implement Universal Health Care.

I want a healthcare system motivated by the patient’s health not a system motivated by profit.

Post from: Blisstree

Leaches & Medical Inflation