Hi Julie....Julie G wrote:Hi all! We’d love an update from anyone who attended the meet-up...
I just got home from the meetup in Mill Valley, and I'm a bit surprised you don't have a bunch of updates by now. I had to drink lots of coffee to stay awake for the drive home, it's going to be hopeless trying to get to sleep, so forgive me if I rattle on and on....and no, the meetup did not last until 10:00 pm, I had to stop off in Vallejo to tend to a problem that came up.
The meetup itself was great, we had a very nice group that was well diversified between E4/E4s and E3/E4s, men and women, younger and older, people who have been dealing with this for years and people who just found out very recently about being E4 positive. Many thanks to Mike for organizing this. We even had a couple of attendees who self-identified as "Lurkers", people who have been monitoring the web site but not yet registered. I hope they felt welcomed enough, and got enough benefit from the meetup to go ahead and register. Speaking directly to them (and any other Lurkers out there), I wanted to urge them to go ahead and register so they can get all the benefits of the site, like the ability to send private messages to other individual members. If you are hesitating to register out of privacy concerns, just do what I did....make up a meaningless user ID and omit any personal details from your profile. It felt a bit weird for me when I did this, but I felt it was necessary and there have been no adverse reactions from anybody that I am aware of.
We went around the table and each of us told the story of how we came to be aware of our E4 positive status and what we have done about it. Some of our more experienced members shared details of their medical or technical knowledge or research, some shared specific nutritional supplements they have found helpful, medical practitioners they recommend, procedures they have gone through to select nutritional supplements, and other actions like detoxification processes and EMF awareness. Some of our newer members expressed feelings of shock, denial, confusion, and almost even despair upon learning of their E4 positive status. One of them even reported being told by a medical practitioner that there is nothing she can do. I hope we were able to convince her that there are indeed many things she can do, and our web site can be a major help to her in figuring out what to do. My own personal contribution to the conversation was tons of questions and boundless enthusiasm. I don't really know very much about this but I am learning fast and I'm very grateful for the existence of this web site. I told our group how I have been a yo-yo dieter all my life, constantly struggling to loose weight, only to gain it all back (and more). Between the Bredesen book and this web site, I have been inspired to take off more than 50 pounds over the past year or so, and keep it off longer than I ever have before. I feel better now than I did before I received my 23 and Me report. It felt strange to be saying that, especially in the presence of people who are having a hard time dealing with their own reports. I hope they were able to take some comfort in knowing we can make changes and improve our chances.
This meetup was definitely worthwhile and I highly recommend a similar gathering for everyone who is able to get one together.