“I feel better now when I feel bad than I used to feel when I felt good.”
Ben Krech on quitting smoking
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Category Archives: Health & Medicine
DASH for Health
My doctor has encouraged me to try the DASH Diet. I don’t need to lose any weight, he just thinks it’s a good healthy, diet. I went back to their website and entered my data: 57 year old male, 155 pounds, moderate activity. Here’s what the DASH program recommends that I eat each day.
Man, that’s lot of fruit and vegetables. If you figure I’m not gonna have spinach for breakfast, that means I have to have three veggies at lunch and three at the evening meal. Tough. Most of the rest seems doable… but who in the hell eats 11 slices of bread a day? I guess I can do two at breakfast and two more at lunch and a couple for the evening meal. But that still leaves 5 slices! I’m sure I’m reading this incorrectly so I have to do a little more research. Stay tuned.
Smoker’s Math
While I’m on the subject. One of my co-workers is trying to quit smoking. She proudly reported that she’s down from a pack-a-day, to just five cigarettes. She seems to really want to stop and I hope she makes it. But the math kept nagging at me.
Let’s say she starts smoking when she gets up at 7:00 a.m and has her last one before retiring at, say, 11:00 p.m. So she consumes 20 smokes over a 16 hour day. On average, that works out to a cigarette every 48 minutes. And if it takes 5 minutes to smoke one, every 40 minutes she’s reaching for the Virginia Slims. That can’t be right, how would she ever get anything done? So I went back and asked.
“Well, I usually had about three cigarettes before I came to work. Maybe three or four during lunch. And the rest after work. Oh, and we usually take a couple of breaks during the day but only long enough to smoke one.” Okay, let’s re-run the numbers:
07:00 – 08:00 — 3
08:00 – 12:00 — 1
12:00 – 01:00 — 4
01:00 – 05:00 — 1
05:00 – 11:00 — 11
That only leaves 6 hours to smoke 11 cigarettes. One every half-hour until bedtime. My mom smoked two packs a day, every day. If she was awake, she had a Winston in her hand or in the nearby ash try. It was hard but satisfying work and she loved it.
Flying solo
After almost four years of working out (weekly) with a personal trainer, I’ve decided to go it on my own. The lady I’ve been working with is very good. Four years ago an hour of her pain cost about $25. This week the fitness center (I assume it was their decision) raised her hourly rate to $50 an hour (there were a couple of bumps along with way). $2,600 a year + a few hundred for club membership and you’re right at three grand a year. I can buy a used car for three thousand dollars, so we parted ways. It reminded me of breaking up with a girlfriend in high school. Painful. I stuck as long as I did because I figured I’d stop working out altogether withour the weekly reinforcement. And now we’ll see.
Vision still 20/20
I’m just guessing here, but I figure I must own five or six hundred pair of reading glasses. And I can lay my hands on maybe a dozen of those. But the good news is they are cheap and disposable. And the better news is my vision is (still) almost 20-20. That’s the word from Dr. Wankum. I was half-way expecting to need full-time specs, but not yet. Waiting for the doctor, with all the eye exam gear surrounding you, is a fine time to think about all the beautiful things there are to see.
“Virginity pledges”
“Virginity pledges” — public promises to remain virgins until marriage — do not protect the young people who make them from the risk of engaging in unsafe sexual practices that could lead to sexually transmitted diseases. Some pledgers engaged in alternative sexual behaviors in order to preserve their virginity. In fact, among those who had not had vaginal intercourse, pledgers were more likely to have engaged in both oral and anal sex than their non-pledging peers. Among virgins, male and female pledgers were six time more likely to have had oral sex than non-pledgers, and male pledgers were four times more likely to have had anal sex than those who had not pledged, the research shows.” .
— Study in the March 18 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health
Flu shot
This is my official warning to seniors, mothers with small children, the lame and infirm of any description. If there is a flu vaccine shortage next year, you’re gonna have to wrestle me for the last vial. This year Barb persuaded me we should not get the shots –assuming we could– so there would be “more for those who need it most.” Easy call when you’re feeling great. Well, we both got the flu and it has been a nasty, miserable three days (assuming the worst is over). So I won’t be holding the door for you down at the clinic, granny. Tell the OATS bus driver to floor it.
Pump me up
From USAToday story: Starting at age 50, people begin to lose 12% of their muscle strength and 6% of their muscle mass every decade. But weight training can reverse these effects in a big way. Two to three months of weight training three times a week can increase muscle strength and mass by one-third, making up for three decades of loss of muscle strength and muscle mass.
Cholesterol
A year ago my LDL was 130 (HDL 73). That’s boderline high and my doc encouraged me to watch my diet. By April this year, my LDL was 114 (HDL 72) so he started me on Lovastatin in an effort to get it under 100. My LDL is down to 75 (HDL 75), a reduction more than 40% (just like it says on TV). You can exercise and eat right but if heredity is working against you, go with the drugs.
Put this on a pack of cigarettes.
Dave Winer remembers the hours leading up to by-pass surgery. “If you haven’t had your chest ripped open you can’t imagine what it feels like, not just physically, but psychologically.”