Monday, February 17, 2014

Chickpea/Pepper/Rice Soup

G'Day, Readers,

I just finished a tres healthy lunch soup which I created last night due to my food processor biting the dust recently.

Talk about a blessing in disguise as if it hadn't kicked it, I wouldn't have plugged in ye ole blender again and this lil darling would not have emerged.

So here's the kidney-friendly recipe for anyone wanting to try it out:

Into the blender went:

1 ripe red pepper
half a cup of cooked chickpeas, (not from a can) *
1 cup of cooked brown rice *
3 cloves of juicy garlic, (chopped ahead of time for the allicin to develope)
a few spoons of 0% fromage blanc, (but 0% yogurt would be great too), some cuminblack pepper
a lil Mrs. Dash  ;)
a micro pinch of sea salt
a splash of apple cider vinegar and water so it all blends

Pour that into a pot and gently coax it up to warmness, not too hot to cook it as the idea is to retain as many vitamins in that lovely pepper as possible.

Serve with a drizzling of EVOO, ("extra virgin olive oil"), which I added instead in the blender on the above pic).

* Use white rice for less potassium.
* Skip the chick peas entirely for even less potassium.

Serves 1. 

And there it is, a kidney happy hot lunch on a cold winter's day--great for those who don't need to eat a renal diet either.

+++vibes  and bon ap,

: J


6 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Juanita,
I have been following your blog since the beginning. My husband was diagnosed with MPA in May 2010. He had been completely med free for over a year after Rituxan in May 2012 and then weaning off of Prednisone slowly. That is truly a nightmare so I feel for you. He stopped following a timed schedule and would wait for his body to feel normal after weaning each milligram down from ten before he would step down again. That seemed to help. He is probably going to be redosed with the Rituxan in the next month, as he is in the midst of a flare.

I came across some information lately and it really shocked me. Several case studies have linked MPA with vaccination, particularly HBV & Influenza. I asked my husband and was surprised to hear that sure enough he had a flu shot that they offered at work 3 weeks before he got sick, a month 1/2 before diagnosis with MPA. Did some further exploring and found the insert for the 2009 H1N1 Influenza vaccine and under section 6.4 Other Adverse Reactions, the last sentence reads "Microscopic polyangiitis (vasculitis) has been reported temporally associated with influenza vaccination."
Here is the link if you are curious:
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/biologicsbloodvaccines/vaccines/questionsaboutvaccines/ucm365286.pdf
Did you have a vaccination in the months leading up to your illness?

Juanita Grande said...

Thanks, Yevette and sorry to hear your husband is relapsing.

In regards to vaccinations, I had never had any in my adult life until last year after being hospitalized for the kidney failure.

Also, the sentence quoted here, uses the word "temporarily", and I'm rather confused by that, as this condition is nothing but. I'd like to know more though as any step closer to a cure or cause is golden.

Thanks for reading and sharing this.

best to your husband,

J

Unknown said...

Hi Juanita,
Thanks for the reply. Yes, that word is confusing but to clarify, the word is "temporally" not temporarily. While it can mean limited in time or within set limits, its usage here implies that MPA follows vaccination as in a sequence of events or onset of events. Here are other medical examples that are clearer:

There was a striking temporal relationship between introduction of the connector valve and a ∼2.7-fold increase in primary bloodstream infection

And,

Analysis of the 37 patients indicates the following findings: (1) ma huang use is temporally related to stroke, myocardial infarction, and sudden death;

Sudden death is anything but temporary:).

I have read other literature which correlates the onset of MPA symptoms with a respiratory or flu like infection. Perhaps this is true in your case. For my husband, the 3 times he has flared since diagnosis have all been triggered by a respiratory infection.

I have two issues: First) based on the insert, it is clear that an adverse reaction to the influenza vaccine is linked to the onset of MPA symptoms. Several recorded cases confirm this. Just do an internet search for Microscopic Polyangiitis and vaccines and they are easy to find. This being the case, I find it interesting that not one doctor has ever asked my husband about his vaccine history. In an efficacy study for HBV they listed the MPA incidence at .09%. Shouldn't this be something that is tracked in a disease for which there is no known cause? Second) the fact that they use a word like "temporally" really ticks me off. Most people automatically assume that the affects of the symptoms will only be temporary. How is that informed consent?

Juanita Grande said...


Interesting...

Thanks for the clarification, sometimes my dyslexic-ish mind gets the better of me.

Re: MPA onset, as far as I remember, my case did not start with any flu-like situation.

FWIW, the age of the damage in my kidney biopsy showed MPA likely being active for many years. I started noting symptoms back in 06-07; none of them lung-based, but close: in the nose, sinuses and ocular socket. Then came skin problems and in '07 the crippling joint pain in both knees.

I've been reading up on this connection between MPA and flu shots and it all makes me tripple-glad to have always (save for perhaps once), opted out of them--even though getting one was highly recommended by my Vasc Rheumy, a professor no less.

Shame, because CKD patients are often encouraged to get flu shots.

Aiiyaiayiiii...

EDIT:

Interesting too: not all of the major companies who produce the flu shot list MPA as an "adverse reaction", (holy understatement). So *some* might be *safe*? Mmmhmmmm...

I didn't look up the live/inhaled versions as on Rituximab, those are not to be taken.

Thanks again for the heads up on all this, Yevette.

J

Juanita Grande said...

http://www.immunize.org/packageinserts/pi_influenza.asp

Juanita Grande said...

And even though inserts from flu shots recently, (2013), no longer seem to list MPA adversely, they now note Guillain–BarrĂ© Syndrome (GBS), a potentially fatal syndrome as one.

And wow too, I was also reading how the '09/10 vaccines were apparently ushered through the testing stage quickly. I read that a full year is usually taken but in the case of the last Flu vaccine, only months. (If memory serves.)

Couple all this with my Rheumy saying to me just last week that on Rituximab, most vaccines are rendered pretty ineffective.

So why subject one's self to that, especially if I don't go out much anyway...

Freaky stuff, this is...

I bet your husband wasn't even given an insert to read before getting that shot at work?

Then there's the reportedly high levels of mercury in those years' batches...

Here's the last page I was on. Now it's high time to lie down.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/vaccination/vaccine_safety.htm