Money and Meniere's

Glenn over at Mind Over Meniere's has outdone himself with this post.  He has put together a pretty creative list of ways people disabled with MD might be able to bring in some cash.  For ease of reading, I've copied and pasted the article below. But please considering going directly to the page and subscribing to up-dates.

10 Ways to Make Money From Home with a Chronic Illness

Posted by Glenn

Chronic illness can take so much from so many of us.

We march along enjoying our lives, families, hobbies, passions, and work, until one day, the unthinkable happens. Disaster strikes and you quickly find yourself in an entirely new reality. One where you are suddenly dependent on others and you must be willing to ask for help. The simple chores of daily life become mountains to climb.

But often, the most challenging obstacle is losing the ability to work and provide for yourself and your family. We spend so much of our lives working that it can come to define you. Sometimes, it’s not just a loss of income, but the loss of purpose as well. I know how devastating this can be.

But when your world is turned upside down, it’s important to never lose hope. There are ALWAYS opportunities available; you just have to know where to look.

Regardless of your limitations, there are many ways to generate income, even when you’re stuck at home. With a little bit of effort and creativity, you can find fulfilling work and start making money again.

Here are 10 ways you can start earning money today:

1) Rent out a room in your home:
If you have an extra bedroom in your house, you can rent it out to travelers on Airbnb.com. If you have never heard of it, Airbnb is a website that connects travelers who are looking for a place to stay with people who want to rent out their entire home or just an extra room. It’s a great way to generate extra income and meet some interesting people. Through Airbnb, people can reserve your extra bedroom, just like they would book a hotel room. You can sign up and start today!

2) Rent out your car:
If you are stuck at home and unable to drive, you can easily rent out your car with Relayrides.com. It works just like Airbnb, except you are renting out your car. The service is available in every state across the US except for New York. Plus they offer a $1 million liability insurance policy to keep you covered in case of an accident. You set the price and availability, and Relayrides takes care of the rest.

3) Hire your friends to drive your car with Uber:
Another way to make money with your car is to hire your friends to drive your car for Uber.com. Uber is an innovative company that enables people to make money by driving their car as a taxi. Drivers sign up, and can work anytime they want, simply by launching the Uber app (Android) (IPhone) on their smartphone. Uber connects their drivers with people nearby who need a ride and handles the entire transaction. If you can’t drive yourself, you can hire a friend to drive for Uber with your car and split the earnings. (You will need to add your friend/family member to the insurance policy for your car)

4) Make money watching other people’s pets:
If you still have some degree of mobility, you can make money by dog sitting from your home. Rover.com and Dogvacay.com are two great websites that connect you with people who need pet sitters. If you love animals, this can be an entertaining way to make extra money. Like all of the other companies listed above, both Rover.com and Dogvacay.com handle the entire transaction. Simply sign up, list your availability and you’re all set.

5) Rent out your driveway as a parking spot:
If you live in a big city, near an airport or train station, or near a tourist attraction, you can make money by renting out your garage, driveway, or parking spot to travelers who need a place to park. You won’t make as much money as the other methods listed here, but if you have the space it may worth it. Remember every little bit adds up. You can list your parking spot for rent on JustPark.com and ParkingSpotter.com.

6) Make money buying and selling on Craigslist:
Craigslist.com is an online classifieds page and a great way to buy and sell things locally. If you happen to be a collector or know a lot about a specific type of product, you can make money through craigslist. By finding undervalued products and getting a great deal, you can turn around and resell those products for a profit. Think of your hobbies. Are there things you know a lot about? Maybe you know a lot about baseball cards or vintage record albums. The more you know about a specific type of product, the better you will be at spotting these deals. Sometimes, people even give stuff away for free on Craigslist. It takes time but if you have a good eye for spotting deals, you can make a lot of money on Craigslist.com.

7) Become a paid consultant:
If you were successful in business and think you can help others in the same line of work be successful too, you can make money as a paid consultant. Clarity.fm is a relatively new platform that connects experts with business owners and entrepreneurs who need advice. When you sign up, you set a per-minute price, and through the app, people will be able to call you and consult with you. If you are knowledgeable, it can be a lucrative opportunity.

8) Become a Freelancer and sell your skills online:
If you have ever held a job at any point in your life, odds are you were being paid to put a skill to work. Through websites like Upwork.com, and Fiverr.com, you can sell your skills as a service. All three of these websites connect people who need work completed with the people who have the skills to do the work.

Can you write well? Maybe you are good at editing and proofreading. Maybe you can build websites or do graphic design. If you can do something well, you will most likely be able to offer it as a service to someone else. Some other common examples are creating PowerPoint presentations, translating documents, computer programming, and much more. You can also become a virtual assistant and help people complete various tasks.

9) Write an EBook and sell it through Amazon
Have you ever thought to yourself that you should write a book? Well, it’s easier now than ever before! Thanks to Amazon, you can now self-publish an EBook quickly and easily through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing website. Within 24 hours of publishing your manuscript, you can have your book for sale in the Amazon Kindle store and start earning royalties.

You can even offer a paperback version through another Amazon owned company called Createspace. After you upload your manuscript to Createspace, people will be able to buy a paperback version of your book on Amazon as well. After each order, a copy of your book is printed on demand, shipped to the customer and you get paid a royalty!

You don’t need to write a long book either. A 10,000 – 15,000 word EBook (this translates to a 30-50 page book) can sell amazingly well on Amazon. To put it in perspective, this article is 1,428 words long. The trick is to plan out your idea and write a little bit each day. If you can write 300 words every day, you can finish your book in a month or two.

10) Teach a course online:
You can make a lot of money by creating a class and teaching students all over the world through websites like Udemy.com and Skillshare.com. If you are good at something and think you can teach it to others, this can be a fun and exciting way to generate money. Not to mention, if you can build a great course and a following of students, you can easily sell your students other courses in the future. Take a few minutes and browse the courses offered for sale. It will give you some ideas for courses you may be able to offer yourself!

Conclusion:
If you have been forced out of your job by your chronic illness, it’s a devastating blow, but you still have options. These 10 ideas are a good way to start making money again, but by no means an all-inclusive list. There are more opportunities to make money than ever before and the gatekeepers are gone.

So give these ideas a try! Even if you are still able to work, these opportunities are a great way to generate some extra income on the side.

There is always so much hope. Your chronic illness cannot and will not ever be bigger than your dreams. I wish you the best of luck!

Status Up-Date: Still Well!

I've had a few requests lately for an up-date on my health since starting the Stephen Spring Treatment Protocol (SSTP*).  As of June 11, 2015, I will have been on the treatment for exactly 21 months.

The first 3 months of this treatment were significant only for faster than usual cycling between my usual episodes.  Symptoms during this time were otherwise the same as they had been in the years before I started this, which included severe brain fog, frequent intense disequilibrium, chronic intense fatigue, roaring tinnitus, and vertigo or near-vertigo depending on my limited response to various treatments I had tried up to that point (IT dex, IT gent, antivirals, and allergy shots to name a few).

Between months 3 and 6, I began to notice periods of feeling well which lasted weeks rather than the usual few days.  Symptoms during my episodes were also becoming less intense and shorter.  Amazingly, the episodes started resolving without the occurrence of vertigo or near-vertigo attacks.  That was a first-ever after almost 5 years of vertigo or near-vertigo punctuating my attacks.

During this time, my hearing also improved significantly.  To better illustrate what I mean, my speech discrimination had been consistently declining and hovered between 55%-65% between January 2011 and October 2012.  In January, 2013 it had fallen to 20%!  It had crept back up to 40% a couple of months later and again hovered there.  I started this treatment in September, 2013 and one month later I happened to have a hearing test scheduled and found the results of the speech discrim then were 75% .  Three months later they bounced up to 95%, a level I had not had since the first months after diagnosis in 2009.  Today I still use my hearing aid because in real world settings the tinnitus interferes with my speech discrim.  I would guess that currently, if I had a professional audiogram, that my speech discrim would probably be consistently greater than 80-85%.  I want to say that not everyone I have spoken to on this treatment has had nearly the improvements in hearing that I have had.  I don't know why, but it seems most people are not reporting such drastic hearing improvements.  Though some have observed more conservative improvement.

By the 6th month of treatment, I had developed a whole new symptom which were these short, intense bursts of dizziness.  They were not preceded by aural pressure, changes in tinnitus, brain fog, or generalized fatigue as my dizziness and vertigo had been before.  They would just happen out of the blue maybe 3 to 6 times per day.  Once I realized they would not turn into full-blown vertigo episodes, I learned to live with them  The best explanation for these was they were probably a result of the changing shape of my endolymphatic sac and the resetting of the valve of Bast.  By about the 9th month, they disappeared as quickly as they started.

One year into treatment, I continued to have longer periods, maybe 4-6 weeks, of feeling 95% normal.  These would be sandwiched between symptoms of increased tinnitus, mild-ish brain fog, and fatigue lasting 12-72 hours.  As of now, I would say this is pretty much where I remain.

Today I continue to take the vaccine, albeit at a lower dose in the last few months to see if I can sustain the effects.  I work 20-30 hours per week and am able to do all the things I did before Meniere's without fear of an attack.  I make plans and am able to keep them.  Even when I am experiencing symptoms, they are not so severe that I cannot carry out whatever it is I need to do that day.  Yes, some days are still a little rough, but NOTHING like they used to be.

Overall, I don't take any of this for granted.  I don't believe I am cured, only that this treatment has perhaps corrected, or rehabilitated, my immune system enough to minimize the effects that Meniere's disease has on me.

*SSTP is not for everyone.  It requires commitment, dedication, and for some people a leap of faith.  Also, each person's circumstances, length and extent of disease are unique, so the treatment course may vary from person to person.  Some may require additional medical intervention with prescription medications prescribed by their physician.  I neither encourage nor discourage others from seeking more information about it.  It is a deeply personal decision that should be made with the support of your family and your physician.  It is probably wise to attempt to exhaust all conventional treatments and to consider just how disabling your symptoms are for you.  On the other hand, it would seem reasonable to believe that earlier intervention might mean better, more durable results.  Until there can be large, well-designed studies, we won't know the answers to many questions.  While I am happy to answer general questions, it is best to reach out directly to Stephen Spring at stephen_spring@me.com for specific details of the treatment and to determine if it is right for you.

A Couple of Cool New Tools

Wanted to take a minute to share a couple of neat tools that showed up in this week.

The first is a thought-provoking questionnaire to help assess dizziness which can be found here.  Check it out!

The second is a super-neat, comprehensive, fillable form for tracking Meniere's developed bn blogger, Glenn, over at Mind Over Menieres.  I could post the pdf, but I imagine Glenn would like to generate some traffic to his site and it's well-worth putting an email address in to get this cool tool.

Is the use of dietary supplements safe?

I have written here at least once before about dietary supplements.  As an oncology dietitian, I hear about and research a variety of supplements people use to treat a variety of conditions, including cancer.  They generally turn to these substances because of something they've heard about from someone they know or read on the internet.

Those of us with Meniere's disease are no different in our desperation to find relief from our symptoms and hope for better health.  However, as is so well-described by Catherine Price in her book Vitamania, dietary supplements are the product of a highly unregulated industry and treated by the FDA in near-opposite fashion as compared to pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter drugs.  Namely, anything classified as a medication, the law states, must undergo years of safety and efficacy testing in real humans before being released for sale to the public.  However dietary supplements are in fact allowed to be sold to the public first, without any safety or efficacy data, and can only be pulled from shelves by the FDA after sufficient evidence, usually in the form of consumer complaints, has revealed that they have caused significant harm or death.  Even in such cases, it is up to the FDA to decide whether or not to pursue a recall and that decision is based in no small part on how much it will cost to launch and pursue an investigation, often running into the millions of dollars and many months or years of legal wrangling.

Harm from supplements may occur immediately upon taking a substance, as was the case with ma huang, aka ephedra, before it was banned for sale in the U.S. in 2004 after its use was linked with heart attacks, strokes, and more than 22 deaths.  But use of other supplements, previously believed to promote good health and longevity, as well as protect from diseases such as cancer, have turned out to also be correlated with potential for serious risk, as in the case of beta carotene and lung cancer, vitamin E and selenium and prostate cancer, and folic acid in the case of prostate cancer.

Now here is an article about a newly published study that has found a strong link between the use of common muscle-building supplements and testicular cancer.  Nice.

Muscle-building supplements linked to testicular cancer: Brown University study

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Stone Hearth News
- See more at: http://www.stonehearthnewsletters.com/muscle-building-supplements-linked-to-testicular-cancer-brown-university-study/cancer-testicular/#sthash.oJoDC5Z6.XNWWYLtY.dpuf

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Men who reported taking muscle-building supplements, such as pills and powders with creatine or androstenedione, reported a significantly higher likelihood of having developed testicular cancer than men who did not use such supplements, according to a new study in the British Journal of Cancer.

Moreover, said study senior author Tongzhang Zheng, the associated testicular germ cell cancer risk was especially high among men who started using supplements before age 25, those who used multiple supplements and those who used them for years.

“The observed relationship was strong,” said Zheng, who led the study at Yale University before joining the Brown University School of Public Health as a professor of epidemiology. “If you used at earlier age, you had a higher risk. If you used them longer, you had a higher risk. If you used multiple types, you had a higher risk.”

Testicular cancer incidence rose to 5.9 cases per 100,000 men in 2011, from 3.7 cases in 100,000 in 1975, Zheng said. Researchers aren’t sure why.

“Testicular cancer is a very mysterious cancer,” he said. “None of the factors we’ve suspected can explain the increase.”

The study is the first analytical epidemiological study of the possible link between supplements and testicular cancer, the authors wrote in the journal. The work was inspired by mounting evidence that that at least some supplement ingredients may damage the testes.

“Our study found that supplement use was related to a higher risk of developing testicular cancer. These results are important because there are few identified modifiable risk factors for testicular cancer,” said Russ Hauser, professor of environmental health science at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a main collaborator of the research.

Testing the odds

To conduct the study, Zheng’s research team conducted detailed interviews of nearly 900 men from Massachusetts and Connecticut — 356 of whom had been diagnosed with testicular germ cell cancer, and 513 who had not. In the interviews, researchers asked the men not only about their supplement use but also about a wide variety of other possible factors such as smoking, drinking, exercise habits, family history of testicular cancer, and prior injury to their testes or groin.

After tallying their data and accounting for all those possible confounders, as well as age, race, and other demographics, the researchers found that the men who used supplements had a 1.65 odds ratio (a 65 percent greater risk) of having developed testicular cancer compared to the men who did not use supplements.

The researchers defined “use” as consuming one or more supplements at least once a week for four consecutive weeks or more.

The odds ratios increased to 2.77 (a 177 percent greater risk) among men who used more than one kind of supplement, and to 2.56 among men who used supplements three years or longer. Men who started using supplements at age 25 or younger also had an elevated associated odds ratio of 2.21, the researchers calculated.

“Considering the magnitude of the association and the observed dose-response trends, muscle-building supplements use may be an important and modifiable exposure that could have important scientific and clinical importance for preventing testicular germ cell cancer development if this association is confirmed by future studies,” the authors conclude in the study.

Future large epidemiologic studies and lab experiments would be necessary to establish a causal link between supplements and testicular cancer.

The study’s lead author is Ni Li of Yale University and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Other authors are Pat Morey of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Theodore R. Holford, Yong Zhu, Yawei Zhang, Bryan A. Bassig, Stan Honig, and Helen Sayward of Yale; Chu Chen and Stephen Schwarz of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Peter Boyle of the International Prevention and Research Institute in Lyon, France; Zhibin Hu and Hongbin Shen of Nanjing Medical University; and Pable Gomery of Massachusetts General Hospital.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, The Beijing Natural Science Foundation, and the Beijing Nova Program supported the research.

- See more at: http://www.stonehearthnewsletters.com/muscle-building-supplements-linked-to-testicular-cancer-brown-university-study/cancer-testicular/#sthash.oJoDC5Z6.XNWWYLtY.dpuf