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…
K. Miguel Hahn 