Life Lessons in Biochemistry?
When we moved to the country a year and a half ago we faced a wee bit of a learning curve, but one of the biggest things I’ve had to wrap my head around has been managing the chemistry in the hot tub and pool. When we bought the house we were mostly excited about the property for gardening and homesteading, and the hot tub and pool were a bonus – we weren’t really “pool people”. Little did I know how many life lessons there were lurking in the depths, waiting to find me…
When we first took possession, we had fantasized about how our first night would be so romantic, we’d jump in the pool, have champagne in the hot tub, and finally relax after all the real estate stress of the spring. When we arrived, the pool was green and mucky, and the hot tub was filled with slime. Not exactly what we were hoping for… After coming to accept the work at hand, I started learning about the basics of how to look after them – and got a quick lesson from the local pool expert. After not too long I was familiar with the main concepts that I needed to pay attention to: pH, total alkalinity, hardness, chlorine levels, and stabilizer. I started to dutifully follow the instructions from the pool place – testing with strips regularly to adjust levels and keep them all in the right amounts. After a month or so I started feeling more and more comfortable – like I knew a bit of what was going on. I developed my routines: go to the store to pick up more chemicals, and get the water tested there to get accurate readings to keep everything running fine.
But things weren’t fine. There were strange things that didn’t seem to add up. In my confusion, and deferring to the experts at the pool stores, I would ask them – why is my pH creeping up? What’s happening with the alkalinity? How come online I’ve read that stabilized chlorine isn’t actually so good to use? Do you sell another kind? The answers were always the same – don’t worry about it. Just do this. Buy more of that. You can ignore those numbers. Stabilizer doesn’t matter. Luckily the local pool expert told me that I should really be paying attention to the stabilizer levels – which no one at the pool stores paid attention to. And I started to dive in online to find my own answers – and realized that what the “authorities” had to say was not so accurate.
I will try to keep the science here to a minimum, but to put it very simply – chlorine, without any stabilizer, is very unstable and will burn off in the sunlight quickly. So we need to add SOME stabilizer to it. But the thing with stabilizer is that IT is VERY stable – and it NEVER goes away. So if you keep on adding stabilizer, it accumulates to levels much higher than you need rather quickly – and in fact – it causes your hot tub to be unsafe – since it is making the chlorine TOO stable – and not actually sanitizing your hot tub. As an added bonus – it messes with your pH which is important for basic functioning of the tub and the other chemicals. But almost NO stores sell unstabilized chlorine – so most people just keep on adding more and more stabilizer and then need to eventually drain the hot tub and refill it and add all the chemicals again since the only way to reduce stabilizer is to dilute it with lots more water. I will spare you more details, but if you are wrestling with actual chlorine hot tub chemistry I am very happy to talk about what I’ve learned. Lucky for me, there is ONE store in Kingston that sells unstabilized chlorine, Aqua Bay – and I found out about it from a friend of Carlyn’s – and that has solved that issue.
There were other chemistry lessons that I won’t go into – but one of the main hurdles to figuring this all out was the testing process. Most stores sell these dip strips that quickly read all 6 chemical levels and tell you where you are at so you can figure out how to balance it. But guess what? Most of these test strips are highly inaccurate – so they will get to you add or not add what you need and the hot tub will get more out of whack and need further interventions later to restore balance. So, after further research, I finally bought an advanced testing kit online that is more work to use, but is highly accurate and has showed me where my levels are at for myself so I can manage it properly without depending on pool stores. Turns out a little knowledge is a powerful thing.
So why on earth am I explaining all of this to you? How are there secret life lessons to be had?
The thing is, that while I was wrestling with these questions in chemistry, I was also wrestling with a parallel set of questions in biology. Mine. And the patterns were eerily similar.
In the winter before we moved I started have some new and interesting physical symptoms. I’ve always had low blood sugar, anxiety and depression, and been somewhat underweight. But in winter of 2022 I started having new and unexplained dizzy spells and fatigue, and was at my lowest weight as an adult. In the past I would get dizzy or weak if I went too long without eating – but this was NOT that – even if I had just eaten in the last hour I would still get winded and tired after 10 minutes of exercise.
So, as a good citizen, I went to my local expert, my family doctor, and asked about it. I had always been wrestling with low blood sugar and iron, and had done some tests over the years with him, leading to vague answers. Usually that I was borderline with my blood sugar, or my iron was low, so I should take more, despite eating a very healthy diet. Which was somewhat satisfying, but didn’t answer the underlying question – WHY? He did a few more tests, including a celiac test, and nothing. I asked what other options we had to investigate or other ideas he had – and he said he had nothing else to try. Basically, his answer was: this is the way you are, you need to adapt to it. You are only borderline on these charts, so you don’t have a real problem – just take supplements for the rest of your life. Then he retired and left me without a doctor.
I tried other avenues including a naturopath, auricular testing, and finally a functional medicine nurse practitioner over the last 2 years – seeking answers to the questions that the health care system could not provide. I tried vitamins, not eating gluten for a year, nutritional supplements, and more. And finally, only recently, did I start getting some hot leads on directions to investigate. After doing an in-depth blood panel with the nurse practitioner, we saw I was low in a lot of key nutrients. But she didn’t stop there. Because her orientation was functional medicine, rather than main stream medicine that seems to be more reactive and putting out fires and responding to red zone issues – she wanted to find what I needed to be in optimal health. So the next thing we did was a GI Map test where we sent a stool sample to New Jersey (sorry New Jersey), and they sent back a 10 page booklet. With Answers. Like revealing that I had VERY low healthy bacteria in my gut. And not only this, but on the next page the big reveal…. I had a parasite. Blastocystis. It had a name. And what does it do? It just so happens to EAT MY FOOD. Before me. Especially my iron. So all of these things, low energy, low weight, low mood, poor sleeping, low nutrients, low healthy bacteria – start making a lot more sense.
The next steps have been to try taking an anti-parasitic to knock this fella out of my gut, which I got special ordered a few weeks ago and have just finished the first round. I will see how that goes, continue with supplements, probiotics, and getting blood work checked in a few weeks to see. It very well might take some more fine tuning and tweaking and trying new things – but I have gotten a lead in the mystery that is taking me in whole new directions.
So what did I learn from these 2 seemingly disparate experiences? What’s the connection?
- The importance of self-advocacy. We have lots of amazing systems in place that help us travel, learn, send information, provide health care, food, and more. But they aren’t exactly designed with ME in mind. And often it seems like they are not holistically “designed” by anyone, they just are the way they have evolved. So while I can get upset at the healthcare system, I also couldn’t do any better if I had to. Same with the hot tub commercial industry. They don’t exist to help ME find my way. I need to do that. By asking good questions. Not being satisfied with the easy answers. And keep on asking questions. And importantly..
- Learning to find my own answers. Talking to multiple people. Reading various sources online. And getting good data – like the pool test kit, or the advanced blood work – that can give insight into the unique mystery of who I am and what I in particular am facing. Then I can start paying attention to…
- The details that matter. I’ve always been more of a big picture, intuitive, emotional decision maker, preferring to skip over the details in service of efficiency. But the details really do matter. In my hot tub I could have amazingly balanced 5 of 6 chemicals, but if one of them is off (even if people tell me that one doesn’t matter) – it can affect all of them, profoundly. And the same in my body – even if my results show I’m only on the margins of dysfunction, there can be a devil in those details – like my friendly neighbourhood parasite lurking in my stomach just skimming off my nutrient profits hoping nobody notices the con. But even with some directions…
- Change takes time. Not only does it take time to find answers – but even once I have some insight, it still takes time to make the chance come to fruition. You can’t change pool pH in a heartbeat – it takes time to adjust it over hours. And the same with my bloodwork – it takes months to bring up iron or B12 or rebuild gut flora. So I need to be operating with good data because change over months is not easy to track or understand on a daily intuitive level. But even when I think I have it all figured out, I really need to…
- Keep living with questions. The biggest obstacles to my edification with both of these processes were my own thinking that I knew all the answers. That stopped me from looking, listening, and paying attention. But when I kept my questions alive – I kept learning and refining, and getting closer to something resembling the truth.
So. Do I have all the answers now? I suspect not. I think I have more to learn on both fronts. And that is probably a good thing…
Finding the Edge
Well. It looks like it has been 2+ years since my last post – a lot has happened since then, but with the changing seasons, it seems like a good time to reconnect with the practice of writing here. It’s been a hectic couple of years – in the spring of 2022 we bought a new house in the countryside north of Kingston, with 20 acres of land to work with as our homesteading canvas. And it’s been quite a whirlwind so far, with a lot of updating to the house, and projects on the land like roadwork, a pond, and solar panels – but as we ease into winter here, I find myself with a little more space than I’ve had for a while – and while the achiever in me wants to continue to check things off to-do lists – I’m inclined to not rush to fill it all in so quickly…
There have been a lot of homesteading projects that I’ve tackled over the last 18 months that were at the edge of what I thought I could do. I already felt pretty comfortable with cutting wood and gardening basics from my farming experiences, but this is a new scale of independent gardening that has been exciting. I’m a pretty big fan of gradually scaling up challenges over time. In Kingston we had a wee garden plot of around 15×20 which we maximized – but now we have jumped to 50×100 – a whole new scale of project, that has been going well with some learning experiences… That has included basic plumbing for the irrigation system, as well as small engine maintenance – something I’ve never really had in my skill set. The powerful lesson for me has been that more things are possible than I imagined – something like changing the oil filter in the ATV, putting in a new car battery, or building a wood shed, are things that are actually doable by regular people – and I’ve done them. With a little help from the internet – reading manuals, watching videos, and asking for advice – these are now things that I can do. And with each small victory comes the confidence to consider taking on a new more demanding challenge.
One thing that has helped me to navigate this edge and survive the stress and chaos of the last year has been accommodation. It’s a theme I’ve been reflecting on for a while – almost more as a general philosophy as well as a HR procedure or workplace practice. In my work life I’ve struggled to find balance over the last decade, with the social nature of my job as a career counsellor – I need to talk to lots of people – and with social anxiety and depression this can be extremely challenging – made even more so by the varying levels of capacity I have day to day. I can go from feeling excited to connect to loathing the torture of being in the spotlight in front of a group.
As I’ve written about in the past, there are a lot of tools I work with to try to navigate the challenges of this existence. Medication, therapy, meditation, journaling, exercise, time in nature, good food, time with friends all have their place and support me thriving. But one factor stands out as being a major difference maker recently – working with accommodations. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some very capable professionals at Queen’s to get to a place in my work that sets me up for success. With the support of my doctor/therapist, I’ve worked over the past years to refine the conditions where I tend to thrive – less group presentations, more focus on smaller groups of mature audiences, more 1-1 and more project time, and working 60% full time (3 days a week). This navigation has required some careful negotiation and consideration of what my employer needs, what I can offer, and what works for my life and those around me. I’m grateful to have been able to find a place that is working for the time being, with a supportive partner, manager, and team. This re-balancing has let me find more balance, with time to spend on homesteading projects working outside on physical tasks to balance the social focus of my time in the office, and which contribute to the home economy in a different way.
I used to have a bias against accommodations, I’ll admit it. I would look at it as a sign of weakness. That someone is using it to get out of work. To be lazy or shirk responsibility. And that critical voice is still in my head, frequently – worrying I’m not being productive enough, making enough money, or comparing myself to people who can do more. But over time I’ve come to see things from new angles too. When I was at my worst, I could have asked to be totally off of work – but I didn’t actually want to. I could have been home being paid – which immature me would have thought of as a sweet gig. But in the moment then, and still now, I didn’t want that – I wanted the opportunity to work. I wanted to be able to contribute and connect. And reap the many rewards that can come from meaningful work – purpose, competency, mastery, impact, challenge, and satisfaction. So I kept working, but reduced to 50%. And started to come out of the darkness. Instead of looking at each day with a feeling of dread, worrying about what my inner rollercoaster ride might be that day – I started to open up with more and more positivity.
I was lucky enough to have a director that saw what I could offer and wanted to work to put me into a position where I could use my strengths in a sustainable way – and had a new role created as “Senior Career Consultant”. In this role I am really starting to feel like I’ve arrived at work, showing up with a new degree of optimism and confidence. I spend a decent chunk of time bringing my 20 years of work experience to bear on working on various projects and creative tasks, support individual students and scholarship programs, and lead some specific group activities – like co-teaching a Design Your Life course for the first time over a whole semester, and leading the development of a new Career & Academic Advising Certificate for staff at Queen’s. Willingly. Instead of being forced to do these projects, I’m the one coming up with them, feeling confident that I can accomplish things.
There was a useful idea I’ve grabbed on to from a Trauma-Informed coaching workshop at Cannexus, that talked about levels of trauma response and activation – similar to a traffic light. In the green zone, all systems are go – we are free to use our strengths and interact with the world freely. In the yellow zone, we are in caution mode, activating stress responses to shut down regular orientations towards connection, resting, digesting, playing, and creativity, more focused on threat response of fight or flight. In the red zone, we move more into learned helplessness, shutting down and giving up. And I had been spending way too much of my time in the red and yellow zones to be healthy.
The tricky thing to figure out about this for me has been that as humans, we tend to be pretty darn resilient. Elastic. Capable to bouncing back. And tolerating hardship. For a long time. Which seems amazing, right? But it can also be a problem – because we CAN put up with non-ideal conditions longer that is ideal. I often find it helpful to think of how I would treat a plant that I loved – I would want to know what it needs to thrive – in simple terms like how much water does it need, how much light, any nutrition, and more. While I could get away with leaving a plant to slowly wither and fade and only water it when it is desperate and wilting – I could also consider giving it what it wants to be its best plant self.
So for me, that looks like finding the sweet spot. The edge. I often work with students who are reluctant to be with discomfort in any way, and can stay stuck because of it. But just as problematic can be taking on too much challenge, and pushing ourselves too far into the red zone. That sweet spot to me is elusive – it’s a dynamic, fluid place – somewhere just pushing the edge of what I think I can do and handle. In learning theory, we call this the Zone of Proximal Development – that space just pushing our limits. That’s where the magic happens. Coming back to the plant metaphor – at the beginning when we have tender babies, we give them everything we can to have a good life. Lights, heat mats, water, soil – but when it is time to put them out into the harsh world – we harden them off, gradually. Putting them out into the elements for an hour, then 2, then 4, then a whole day – and they respond, amazingly – by toughening up. But if we just throw them in the ground and fend for themselves, many of them are shocked and die. The trauma of the change is too much. But with support, they put down deep roots and strengthen their stem, grow leaves, and start to be self-sustaining and resilient.
Another theory from work comes up for me with this – the concept of Self Authorship. That as we mature into adulthood, we move from a place where we are managed by other people – parents and teachers – who tell us what to do, where, when, and how – and slowly over time we take over responsibility for our lives. And much of this growth happens in response to crisis and disequilibrium. When faced with a challenge where our previous understanding and skills don’t seem to be up to the task, we are given the choice of failure or growth. Growth is not always the outcome of crisis, but it CAN be – with supports along the way and room to make mistakes and try new things.
For me, and many others, the past few years have been tremendously challenging. There has been suffering, heartbreak, loss, and more. But there has also been growth. And signs of hope. People coming together. Innovation and creativity. And setting boundaries and considering self-care. For me, working with challenges used to be about pushing through or giving up. But now I see there are more options at play – what kinds of ways can I support myself through this period ahead? Are there resources or modifications that I can employ? How can I grow from this? While there will always be unexpected disruptions and crises that are out of my control, can I try to be moving towards setting up my life to put myself in a position where I can thrive? To spend more time in the green zone, and less in the red and yellow zones? Where I can be at my best, not just for me, but for those around me? With this general mindset of trying to set myself up for success, I can start to feel more confident that I can handle the occasional shock, knowing that there is more elasticity and resiliency in the system if I’m not spending so much time stretched to my limits. In finding my edge, and spending time there, I can also find strength, courage, and hope for the future.
K. Miguel Hahn 