She was pretty good. She was poking and prodding trying to find an opening or get me off balance but I stuck to my fundamentals and got my hands on the ball. Just as I was about to pull the ball away from her my wife called out my name and the game was over.
So where does this put me?
1: As much as a preach an iron willed adherence to our chosen protocols, I have been slacking off on sprouts and supplements over the last two weeks. I have probably been getting 60 to 75% of my normal intake. This shift is mostly due to my twin obsessions: World events and taking down the drop ceiling in my basement, fixing all the wiring code violations, and paining the ceiling flat black.
Part of my slacking off on sprouts and supplements may also be an informal experiment to see if these things are helping, or if it is more my diet and monaural beats that are helping.
2: I don't mess around on my diet and monaural beats. I may drink Pepsi (with real sugar) all day and eat a tub of ice cream (with limited ingredients and real sugar) every couple of weeks, but those things are part of my Bolt approved diet. What is not on the diet is gluten, lectins, and any fish that is not wild caught and any meat that is not grass fed and finished beef. And I listen to my monaural beats every night for 50 minutes. It's nice.
Every time I have an RBD event it makes me kind of sad and makes me wonder if the protocols I am following are helping my health. And then these two things cheer me up:
1: My analogy of what has happened to my body, and to others like me, is the old beat up pickup truck. I am an old beat up pickup truck with some bad wiring and sketchy parts. If I can find a way to stop doing harm to this truck, it might provide me good functional use for the rest of my life. All the babying in the world won't repair the frayed wires and the hole in the muffler, but if I park it in a garage, keep up with the maintenance, use quality fuel, and don't take it off road or try to haul anything, it just might last.
The important part of the old beat up pickup truck analogy is acknowledging things ARE wrong with me and supplements and monaural beats and diet are not going to fix those things. The one difference between me/us and a truck is, I believe, as living organisms, if we can stop the damage from occurring, our bodies will heal to some degree. The point is: I do not expect my RBD to go away totally, and I don't believe sporadic episodes are evidence for the protocols failing. Now if the whole ship starts to sink, well that is a different story.
2: I am objectively better than I was 3.5 years ago when I got diagnosed with RBD. When I first got diagnosed with RBD I also had a number of PD signs. I had a crusty patch of seborrheic dermatitis on my face and dandruff that would not go away. Both have been gone for a couple of years now. I frequently got dizzy when I stood from a chair and had to hold onto something. Gone for over a year. I had a really sore left shoulder and left upper arm to the point where it was hard to use that arm and hard to sleep on that side. Mostly gone. Not an issue. Full range of motion just a little sore sometimes. I had formication (the feeling of bugs crawling on my lower legs) which is gone. I still have random jerky muscle twitches but those are way reduced. The one thing that is not a lot better is my sore neck. It is better than it was 3.5 years ago. It used to be hard to hold my head up when cutting the grass because it hurt. Now it is just noticeably sore almost all of the time and sometimes it is hard to get comfortable.
In conclusion: I think I am a functional old beat up pickup truck and I need to stick much more closely to my maintenance plan: rbd-pd-protocols.blogspot.c...
Most Importantly: I have a high school degree, no medical training, and poor impulse control. Buyer beware.
