Oil pulling for keratosis pilaris diary

I must preface my remarks with the information that I am not medically qualified, and i am not advising anyone to do anything. I am all in favour of people in general taking control and responsibility for their own health.

About 50% of the adult population suffers from keratosis pilaris to some extent. Also know as chickenskin, it looks like permanent goosebumps, sometimes red, sometimes not. There is a whole collection of relation conditions, which all have their own impressive latin name.

Some people will hardly think of this as a condition, and others are severely depressed by it. Of course, the severity and the impact that it makes upon your life are affected by how important your appearance is, where your tolerance for imperfections lies, etc. I have it, as do two of my children, one of whom has it pretty badly.

Anyoldhoo, having found the support forum and message board for KP, I discovered a discussion about oil pulling, which is apparently as well-known technique in various parts of the world. Put simply, it consists of using pure oil, like sunflower, sesame (untoasted) or coconut, and first thing in the morning, taking about a tablespoon, swilling it around the mouth for 20 minutes and then spitting it out.

People on the forum have reported mixed results from the method. Some claim to have seen a reduction in their KP, others report side effects such as a reduction in neck pain, or whitening of the teeth.

Few people seem able to explain how it can help. One postulates that it may remove toxins from the system somehow, because some toxins are fat soluble while others are water soluble... others that it kills bacteria. However, I am always in favour of things that don't harm but may help health, and so I decided to give it a try for myself, and record the results here.

I have often wondered what benefit the Roman got from covering themselves in oil and having a slave scrape it off again. Maybe this is an internal version of that....

Day 1
I do not have sunflower, untoasted sesame oil or coconut oil, and I wondered why people didn't use olive oil. Having tried it this morning I think I know the answer. Extra Virgin cold pressed olive oil has a strong, bitter, flavour, which may be tasty in salad dressings, but is quite hard to deal with when the undiluted oil is swishing around the mouth.

It was quite thick, too, even after I had swished it around for 20 minutes. It seemed to be doing something, because my tongue and gums were tingling quite strongly, although I was pulling it through my teeth quite slowly and gently. Tomorrow I will find a less flavoured oil.

At the end, I spat out the oil, and swilled my mouth out with salt water, which I also spat out. I then brushed my teeth. They do look whiter to me. There was something about the activity which woke me up and made me feel more alert... but maybe that was just the knowledge that I needed to observe the effects.

Day Two
I have sunflower oil, but it isn't cold pressed or organic. It's very easy to use for the oil pulling, hardly any flavour, not thick, but my mouth didn't tingle as it did yesterday with the olive oil. I managed 20 minutes, rinsed and brushed my teeth.

My tongue is less coated, my gums look pinker and my teeth whiter - though that could be expected I suppose, from the unaccustomed workout they are getting first thing. This is making me think about what I put into my mouth during the day... and making me more alert too.

Day Three
Decided to go back to olive oil. Although it tastes much more strongly than the bog standard sunflower, it also seemed to be more... hmmm hard to describe... seemed to have more active ingredient I suppose. Managed only 16 minutes before I started to gag and had to spit it out.

Gums and teeth continue to improve. It certainly wakes you up in the morning! Concentrating on a mouthful of oil is an unusual method for waking I I grant you....

My tongue is definitely a lot less coated, and my skin seems smoother. I do think that simply the attention that you pay to yourself in the course of doing this may be effective... also that the pinkness of the gums may be responsible for the apparent increased whiteness of the teeth.

New soup track

Soup posted a new track to his Myspace profile. I like it a lot, although it is a bit inconvenient to have to go to MySpace everytime I want to hear it....

Money programme on email

Today's Money Programme (on BBC2 at 19.00 for UK viewers), is on the subject "Email is ruining my life". The BBC website carries an outline of the programme which includes these top tips from Loughborough University's Dr Tom Jackson.

He has spent the last nine years researching and developing better e-mail practice and has five tips he believes can help you take control of your inbox:

* Invest in a spam filter. You shouldn't open a spam e-mail, because as soon as you open the e-mail up, it notifies the organisation that has sent that, saying this is a valid e-mail address. They know how long you've looked at it, when you looked at it and did you go back to it.
* Target your e-mail. One of most annoying things about e-mail is the sheer number of messages we receive that aren't addressed primarily to us. Does everyone in the cc box really need to be copied in on your words of wisdom? Basically, a cc is there for information purposes only, and you should only use it for that purpose.
* Write more carefully. The reason to write carefully is crystal clear. It just vastly increases the chance that whatever it is you want to get done will get done. If you don't write carefully, there's room for misunderstanding.
* Reduce interruptions. I think it does start to stress people out. Simply by changing the way they have their e-mail application set up, they can start to reduce some of that stress.
* Get training. E-mail seems like common sense. Anyone can write an e-mail. But the issues we're having are that many people are struggling with e-mail communication - and training can really help with that.

New material gets floppy when wet

So? I hear you say. I can think of a few which get floppy when wet... cardboard, paper etc. This is a new material based on a sea cucumber, which the New Scientist reports has a unique ability to go floppy in water and rigid when dry. Developed by Stuart Rowan and Chris Weder of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, US, the material is a polymer made from two different compounds and shot through with microscopic cellulose fibres. "It's directly inspired by the sea cucumber," Rowan says. It is the precursor of materials which may be able to form soft clothing which will then morph into armour with the addition of a current or some other trigger.

As the developer of the new material says categorically that it was based on the abilities of the sea cucumber to go rigid in defence, which is known as biomimicry, it reminded me of the talk given at TED in which Janine Benyus talked about biomimicry: the ways in which we can learn from nature.

Brian Protheroe

I bought Brian Protheroe's album Pinball in the Notting Hill Record and Tape Exchange in the 1970s... and loved it. He's recently had a revival of interest and so tracks with accompanying video have been appearing on youtube.

There's the title track from that album Pinball, and others like Fly Now from the Pinball album too.
Although I didn't come across before youtube featured it, CitySong.

I know it's the kiss of death for an artist if I say I like them... but I like Brian Protheroe. His songs are great to sing along with, and to listen in the early hours of the morning.

Lasseg and Soup

I have written in other places about how I came across the Lasseg music edit "Amateur" on youtube, which lead me to other films by lasseg, such as the cello music by Giovanni Sollima and his other fantastic films.

I am grateful that I found Soup's reply to the Lasseg film Amateur, because it was through that I found his music, which I love.

Losing my (comment) virginity

One of my two readers left a comment yesterday. It seems the way to coax the lurkers into commenting is to mention them by name! Now I am left wondering if the reason my other reader is slacking in the comments department is because I haven't mentioned him.

I already knew the swiftest way to find out whether anyone reads what you have written is to misspell their name. Thus calling someone Angela Smith instead of Andrea Smith, or Robin Braggs instead of Robin Baggins will elicit comments, or complaints or letters from a solicitor much MUCH faster than claiming that the world is flat, or evolution an illusion.