Game changers

By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas

Last December 1 was the first year anniversary of my heart and kidney failure. As a consequence, I could not breath as my lungs were full of water or were drowning. Yes, you can drown even if on a dry bed. I was rushed to the hospital at 4:00 a.m.
My lungs got drained through diuretics to make me pee and I was made to take in numerous pills to control my blood pressure, etc. After three days we were discharged. My legs were wobbly but I walked out the facility to the taxi stand. I did not have to lean on my wife.
Looking at our hospital bills did not kill me. They were pretty reasonable. Thanks to Baguio General Hospital. It was when we were at the drugstore that we almost got floored. I was dazed by the fistful of pills I would have to take daily. And they were pretty expensive. What kept me upbeat was the fact I was then added to the list of survivors.
I had been through one year of popping in the pills worth about a thousand pesos a day. But God is great. Life is good. How I got into that emergency state is a long story but I will write about it in the coming days for people to learn from. Even if that would be a hope against hope.
Every time I went for follow up consultations my lady doctor was all smiles. Same thing with my nephrologist. From the 5+ creatinine level I had just after coming out from the hospital, it is now 2.77. An encouraging progress? My ECG and 2D echo were good. Am not out of the woods yet. There is still a long way to go.
The number of pills I have to pop in everyday were greatly reduced. And, thank God…. also the cost.
About two months ago I dropped by my friend’s clinic who is an alternative medicine doctor. He is also a fellow member of the AnandaMarga Yoga society. He told me about what our guru said about the best yoga exercise for the kidneys. The twist. Since the information was transmitted orally from the guru, I wanted to get a medical validation. Something I could understand as a layman. So I searched Google. As I joked with my wife, you know former US President Bill Clinton was an alumnus of George Washington University (GWU) while I am an alumnus of GU (Google University).
As far as I was concerned, I think I found out the validation I needed. When you do the twist yoga pose, the kidneys are squeezed of the toxins they had stored. Upon release of the pose, the kidneys are let loose or are “unsqueezed”, fresh blood rushes in…. with fresh oxygen and nutrients. A new energizing supply.
While I had been doing the pose long ago, I never did it for many years already. So I went back to doing it again. After about three weeks of regularly doing it everyday, I was serendipitously scheduled for a blood test. When the results came out, my creatinine went down. From the 3.0 level it became 2.77. That was the lowest I ever got after that damn heart failure.
So I went back to my doctor friend to tell him the good news and to say he should have told me about the twist earlier.
Then there was this other valuable information from the same doctor. He said our yoga guru also said one of the best ways to cleanse the kidneys was by drinking fenugreek water everyday. Again, just in case there was any error from the oral transmittal of the information (our guru died years ago) and to have some validation, I went back to google. And surely, the information was right.
So I started searching for fenugreek (what a strange name) seeds from herbs. I was able to buy some from an Indian store in town.
After drinking fenugreek water for three days there was a noticeable increase in my energy level which appeared to be stagnant the past many months. So I am drinking it everyday.
But here is the warning I found out from the recesses of Google. Don’t take in fenugreek with garlic oil or turmeric water as your blood sugar level can go very low. It might also make your blood so thin with really dire consequences. Too much of anything is bad. So to be safe do things only after discussing these with your regular doctor. Sadly, so many of them are closed-minded when it comes to alternative remedies even if these had been validated for thousands of years.
Merry Christmas. **