Not meaning to stir up major excitement, but something does seem to be blocking or reducing my PEM. Further testing on myself might take weeks, and if it does work for other people, they'd probably be annoyed that I delayed so long.
I had to buck some firewood, and doing even a few cuts by handsaw is enough to trigger PEM. Instead I fired up the chainsaw, bucked a lot of wood (couple of hours), and accept that I'd have serious PEM the next day. After all, my muscles were really sore after that. No PEM the next day. I checked my diary to see what might have blocked the PEM. The day before I had pancakes made with some ground cumin seed.
When I first tried a significant amount of cumin, 2.5 years into my mysterious medical disorder, it made me feel completely healthy again. After a few weeks of taking cumin seed daily, I realized that somewhere along the way it had stopped working. I try it again a couple of times a year, just in case it decides to start working again, but no luck. What I think is happening is that it doesn't reduce the baseline symptoms...but it does block PEM. I just didn't realize it because it's harder to notice PEM that doesn't occur. The chainsawing session with majorly sore muscles was simply too astounding to not notice. I did more serious chainsawing yesterday (fourth day after cumin) and again there's no significant PEM (at least not yet!).
The problem is that testing PEM reduction is difficult, since we never know for sure whether PEM will occur or how strong it will be. I can't be totally sure yet that the blocking was due to cumin seed. I have to wait until PEM occurs reliably again, and repeat the experiment several times, with different physical activities. I did check a few months back in my diary, and found two times I'd used cumin, and I managed to do somewhat unusually strenous physical activities the following day (changed truck wheels, dug soil), without reporting serious PEM the next day. Not proof, but encouraging.
Since cumin seed is readily available and a very safe food, I thought I'd post this and see if anyone else is interested in testing it themselves and reporting back here. I used a couple of teaspoons worth of cumin seed in the pancakes. (Yes, I know it's not the greatest taste, but it was for testing to see if the improvement it once gave might return.) When I first tried it, I used a teaspoon full, which was adequate. I didn't bother to test for the minimal amount required. I don't know how quickly ground cumin loses potency, so if you try the experiment with ground cumin so old that you don't know which decade it's from, failure may not prove anything.
When I first tried it, I followed up by finding a list of the active compounds in cumin seed and testing other herbs that contained some of them. I'd pretty much narrowed it down to cuminaldehyde (4-isopropylbenzaldehyde). Perilla is another herb with cuminaldehyde (or at least a version of it), but the effect of cumin wore off before I was able to obtain any perilla, so I don't know if it is or isn't as effective.
Maybe cumin only works for me, so don't buy vast quantities expecting a miracle. However,since many of you already have it in your kitchen, and you are going to do activities that you expect will trigger PEM, taking a teaspoon of cumin the day before--and paying attention to whether your PEM symptoms are different from expectations--should be a simple, safe experiment. Maybe it will make someone's life a little less awful.
As I'm finishing this up, I noticed that my temperature is up .4C, so maybe yesterday's activity is causing PEM. It didn't rise this way yesterday, so maybe cumin only works for 24 hrs or so.
Hoping that this potential PEM blocker isn't a false hope...
I had to buck some firewood, and doing even a few cuts by handsaw is enough to trigger PEM. Instead I fired up the chainsaw, bucked a lot of wood (couple of hours), and accept that I'd have serious PEM the next day. After all, my muscles were really sore after that. No PEM the next day. I checked my diary to see what might have blocked the PEM. The day before I had pancakes made with some ground cumin seed.
When I first tried a significant amount of cumin, 2.5 years into my mysterious medical disorder, it made me feel completely healthy again. After a few weeks of taking cumin seed daily, I realized that somewhere along the way it had stopped working. I try it again a couple of times a year, just in case it decides to start working again, but no luck. What I think is happening is that it doesn't reduce the baseline symptoms...but it does block PEM. I just didn't realize it because it's harder to notice PEM that doesn't occur. The chainsawing session with majorly sore muscles was simply too astounding to not notice. I did more serious chainsawing yesterday (fourth day after cumin) and again there's no significant PEM (at least not yet!).
The problem is that testing PEM reduction is difficult, since we never know for sure whether PEM will occur or how strong it will be. I can't be totally sure yet that the blocking was due to cumin seed. I have to wait until PEM occurs reliably again, and repeat the experiment several times, with different physical activities. I did check a few months back in my diary, and found two times I'd used cumin, and I managed to do somewhat unusually strenous physical activities the following day (changed truck wheels, dug soil), without reporting serious PEM the next day. Not proof, but encouraging.
Since cumin seed is readily available and a very safe food, I thought I'd post this and see if anyone else is interested in testing it themselves and reporting back here. I used a couple of teaspoons worth of cumin seed in the pancakes. (Yes, I know it's not the greatest taste, but it was for testing to see if the improvement it once gave might return.) When I first tried it, I used a teaspoon full, which was adequate. I didn't bother to test for the minimal amount required. I don't know how quickly ground cumin loses potency, so if you try the experiment with ground cumin so old that you don't know which decade it's from, failure may not prove anything.
When I first tried it, I followed up by finding a list of the active compounds in cumin seed and testing other herbs that contained some of them. I'd pretty much narrowed it down to cuminaldehyde (4-isopropylbenzaldehyde). Perilla is another herb with cuminaldehyde (or at least a version of it), but the effect of cumin wore off before I was able to obtain any perilla, so I don't know if it is or isn't as effective.
Maybe cumin only works for me, so don't buy vast quantities expecting a miracle. However,since many of you already have it in your kitchen, and you are going to do activities that you expect will trigger PEM, taking a teaspoon of cumin the day before--and paying attention to whether your PEM symptoms are different from expectations--should be a simple, safe experiment. Maybe it will make someone's life a little less awful.
As I'm finishing this up, I noticed that my temperature is up .4C, so maybe yesterday's activity is causing PEM. It didn't rise this way yesterday, so maybe cumin only works for 24 hrs or so.
Hoping that this potential PEM blocker isn't a false hope...
I love cumin in Mexican foods but have not used the seed.
