Mitch
Jul 10th, 2005, 09:02:26 PM
I've been rather reluctant to talk about this, but, I am in the early stages of Wilson's Disease.
Wilson's Disease is a disease that is passed through your genes, though it is often highly recessive. It is a disorder where your liver cannot filter out the copper in your bloodstream, and it can eventually cause liver failure. But, before that it affects your vision, cooredination, and brain control. It aso caused tremors in the arms and hands, which I ahve had for the past twelve years. It usually manifests symptoms in people aged 6-20, so it really did start to show at the right time, but I never really looked too hard at it.
A few weeks ago I woke up and felt like I was going to die. I couldn't hardly see straight, and I really didn't know what to do. So, somehow I made it down to the medical clinic and it turned out that my blood copper level was through the roof. They gave me a shot to sort of super-charge my liver or something, and it helped a lot, though it still took a week for me to get all the way better.
Since then, I have done a lot of research, and discovered that even though I may have had a very mild, recessive form of Wilson's, my diet has been such that I was taking in far mroe copper than my body could handle, essentially accellerating the disease's effects. In the last few years, my vision has really been going downhill, my concentration has lapsed, and my tremor has gotten worse. Wilson's is almost definitely what I have.
It won't go away, ever, but through proper diet (forgetting abotu most all of my favorite foods for the rest of my life) I should be fairly healthy.
It does mean that I can no longer have: peanut butter, whole grain bread or grain cereal, shellfish, salmon, pork, goose, duck, nuts, dried fruits like rasins or turkish apricots, can't have nectarines, chocolate, olives, mushrooms, soy sauce, soy protein, soy milk, soy anything else, vegetalbe juice cocktial, avacados (yuck!), dates (YUM!), beans of almost any kind (Nooo! I love my Nalley Chili!), none of those diet drinks or instant breakfasts, or multi-vitamins containing copper or other minerals.
Yeah, so... turkey on white bread it is. Blaaaand city. At least I can still eat hot peppers and rice and beef and stuff! Not much else, though...
Now that I know what to eat, and what not to, I should be dine, and might actually get my eyesight back, as well as get rid of my tremor. That's the plus. The bad news is that I'll probably need a new liver by the time I'm 40. Joy. I'm not posting this for sympathy, or anything like that. I have Wilson's, and I'll deal with it. I jsut want to let you know that your diet can really affect your life a lot more than you might think.
Wilson's Disease is a disease that is passed through your genes, though it is often highly recessive. It is a disorder where your liver cannot filter out the copper in your bloodstream, and it can eventually cause liver failure. But, before that it affects your vision, cooredination, and brain control. It aso caused tremors in the arms and hands, which I ahve had for the past twelve years. It usually manifests symptoms in people aged 6-20, so it really did start to show at the right time, but I never really looked too hard at it.
A few weeks ago I woke up and felt like I was going to die. I couldn't hardly see straight, and I really didn't know what to do. So, somehow I made it down to the medical clinic and it turned out that my blood copper level was through the roof. They gave me a shot to sort of super-charge my liver or something, and it helped a lot, though it still took a week for me to get all the way better.
Since then, I have done a lot of research, and discovered that even though I may have had a very mild, recessive form of Wilson's, my diet has been such that I was taking in far mroe copper than my body could handle, essentially accellerating the disease's effects. In the last few years, my vision has really been going downhill, my concentration has lapsed, and my tremor has gotten worse. Wilson's is almost definitely what I have.
It won't go away, ever, but through proper diet (forgetting abotu most all of my favorite foods for the rest of my life) I should be fairly healthy.
It does mean that I can no longer have: peanut butter, whole grain bread or grain cereal, shellfish, salmon, pork, goose, duck, nuts, dried fruits like rasins or turkish apricots, can't have nectarines, chocolate, olives, mushrooms, soy sauce, soy protein, soy milk, soy anything else, vegetalbe juice cocktial, avacados (yuck!), dates (YUM!), beans of almost any kind (Nooo! I love my Nalley Chili!), none of those diet drinks or instant breakfasts, or multi-vitamins containing copper or other minerals.
Yeah, so... turkey on white bread it is. Blaaaand city. At least I can still eat hot peppers and rice and beef and stuff! Not much else, though...
Now that I know what to eat, and what not to, I should be dine, and might actually get my eyesight back, as well as get rid of my tremor. That's the plus. The bad news is that I'll probably need a new liver by the time I'm 40. Joy. I'm not posting this for sympathy, or anything like that. I have Wilson's, and I'll deal with it. I jsut want to let you know that your diet can really affect your life a lot more than you might think.