Some Weekend Reading for the Zaftig

Because "zaftig" is a nicer word than the value-and-judgement-laden "overweight".  (Which implies there is an absolute standard of what someone should weigh out there somewhere--maybe in the book of "Revelations"?)

I have known some things for a long time but have only figured out that they are, like, science and junk while studying nutrition for my kids.  I offer this as food for thought, as we enter the weekend, and hope that it will be encouraging to my readers.

1. People know how to eat, and telling/forcing/shaming them into eating in an arbitrarily determined "good" way does harm.

2. There is no connection between being zaftig (fat even) and having heart disease.

No, you heard that right.  None.  Zip.  Nothing, in the research, for 50 years.

3. People's weight is largely genetically determined and there is no sucessful method for achieving and maintaining a lower body weight than your body wants to be.  ("But, people who don't eat lose weight... like anorexics and junk..."  Yes, anyone who doesn't eat enough will lose weight and keep losing, but they also die.  This doesn't sound "sucessful" to me.)

4. If you trust yourself and your body, that will not automatically put you at an unhealthy weight, though it may be an unfashionable one.

Finally,

5. Weight perception in America is about status, power, and fashion, much the same as footbinding was in ancient China.  Even though footbinding was painful, debilitating, and probably shortened women's lives, they still did it because the social rewards were so high.  Because mockery, discrimination, and cruelty toward fat people are very acceptable in our society (can you think of a sitcom without a fat funny guy to mock? can you remember when movies had a funny, poor-grammar-using black maid for the same purpose? do you think either is okay?), people will take drastic risks in order to be thin.

So read up on Ellyn Satter's How to Eat series.  And then go enjoy your breakfast, scrambled eggs, sausage, toast and marmelade, espresso, and all.  I give you permission.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.  And, despite what you may think, I who write this have never been what society calls "fat".  Although I have felt fat, and I have worked after each pregnancy to lose weight.  While I always started in the past with restrictive eating to lose weight, I can't (and no one can) maintain it, so I always fell back into eating more or less what felt right and working on allowing myself more time to move in pleasurable ways--gardening, belly dancing, etc.  It does work, although I can't force myself to weigh 150 that way.  When I lost an unhealthy amount of weight by working 12-hour-shifts and not eating before my wedding, I hit 148 and felt like crap, so I'm not sure where I came up with the idea that 150 was desirable, but hovering between 160 and 170 is where my body is happy, and I am eminently healthy.  So Nyaaah!

Being Independent With Your Health (Without Being A Green Witch)

Do I have to say that all medical advice/commentary on this blog should be considered educational only, and is to be used at your own risk?  You're more mature than to randomly believe some blogger you've never seen and then to turn around and sue her when you turn yourself blue, right?

Did you know "green witch" is a technical term?  It means a witch (yes, as in someone who practices either Wiccan, Dianic, or other witchcraft) who uses plants to aid her in casting spells, vs. say, just candles or bits of newt.  We aren't going there.  Let's be clear about what I think about herbs from the get-go, so nobody goes out and either eats poison hemlock or turns themselves blue like that guy who took colloidal silver internally:

1. Plants aren't magic, they are just plants.

2. Using herbs isn't inherently any safer than using "conventional" drugs.  Herbs are drugs.

3. Using herbs isn't any more virtuous than using conventional drugs.  Herbs are drugs.

4. Since herbs are drugs, it behooves anyone who wants to use them to learn a lot about them BEFORE they begin using them.  This means that you do not wander into the healthfood store armed with only something you read on the internet (on a page with little spinning .gif crystal pictures) that says that some obscure Chinese herb will probably be good for your diabetes, so you quit with the insulin and now want something you can't pronounce, which you will take home and put under your pillow.  No no no.  Herbs are not magic, remember?

5. Once you do decide to use herbs, be aware that they are less pure than conventional drugs most of the time, and therefore that effects may be 1) less predictable or 2) less instantaneous, but that they can also be 3) just as potent.  So don't mess around, or take twice as much as the recommended dose, or take something internally meant to be used as a salve--remember the guy who turned blue, ok?

6. Using herbs does not preclude using conventional drugs and using conventional drugs does not preclude using herbs, but before you use them  both together BE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND THE ACTION OF EACH.  Otherwise you might end up taking Coumadin and St. John's Wort at the same time, and bleeding to death when you smash your thumb.  I joke not at all.

7. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, get this book and pay attention to it.  Do NOT use herbs that are safe for people who are not pregnant or breastfeeding.  Do NOT go pick something random in your backyard.  Do NOT use compounds that contain more than one herb that you did not mix yourself from single herbs you bought from a reputable source.  Do NOT use any of the cohoshes.  Do NOT just search the internet and use something that someone said sort of worked for them one time.  Are we clear about how conservative I want you to be?

8. If you decide to use herbs, don't lie about it to your doctor.  When he asks what medications you are taking, tell him.  If he scolds you or thinks you're crazy or forbids it, well, then go find another doctor who can disagree with you without treating you like a child.

So, with those concepts and cautions in mind, shall I tell you about how to become more independent with your health?

First of all, I think you should be more independent with your health because 1) I think it's good for everyone to be independent about their health, because it's theirs, not their doctor's and 2) with the advent of a very poorly concieved national healthcare system, I think people will have even less access to doctors and hospitals than we are used to in America. 

There are already (and I have been one) many people who can't afford to go to the doctor for anything except an illness they think might kill them.  This means that a lot of high blood pressure, dental problems, arthritis, lung, sinus, and bladder infections, and so on, don't get treated.  While I am never going to discourage people from consulting a physician (because they really are pretty smart sometimes), I think it's silly for someone with a UTI who can't afford an antibiotic/MD visit to simmer in misery for three weeks because they don't know how to go about treating it at home.  (Answer: lots of fluids, cranberry juice, and uva-ursi, but go look it up yourself.)  And since you think better when you are not feverish or in pain, I think it makes sense to learn about herbs while you feel reasonably good instead of flipping through a book or internet search while you are trying to pass a kidney stone.

I also dislike being entirely dependent on an expensive, monopolistic system for something as important and personal as my health.  Although I know how to speak the language of the system, and so get treated with more respect than a lot of patients, I also dislike dealing with a system that still, more often than not, treats me like a naughty, slightly retarded child rather than an intelligent, educated adult who might know something about her health that the practitioner does not.

This is getting long, so without more ado here are Breanna's steps to using herbal and natural remedies:

1. Educate yourself.  Read books, read the internet if you must, and talk to the nice, batty cat lady behind the counter at the health food store.  Keep reading until your sources are pretty much in agreement, and then follow the more conservative guidelines.  This means that if one book says, "totally use black cohosh to start labor in a woman who is overdue"  but four books say "cohoshes have been linked to cardiac arrest of the newborn", then you don't use the cohosh.  The same thing applies to books that are telling you how to manage your high blood pressure, etc.

1a. Remember that herbs are not magic, and so filter what you read in herbals.  Some plants have a reputation for doing a certain thing not because people actually have experienced that, but because the idea makes sense magically.  I.e., asparagus is supposed to help male fertility not because of observed effects, but because it...er, looks like it ought to, magically speaking.  Mistletoe, a toxic herb, has a very long history of being magical--at least back to the druids--and is sometimes recommended to make things more "potent".  It doesn't, it just damages your liver.  So when you run across statements in herbals (written by people with names like Susun Weed or Rosemary Gladstar or having titles like Gaia's Garden) be aware that some of their advice is very solid, but others, like the idea that standing in the moonlight will relieve female troubles, is magical.  If you are looking for this, you can ignore the magic bits--they are generally very up front about telling you which parts of their advice are based on "lore" and which parts are based on experience.

2. Realize that nothing, not even conventional drugs, are magic bullets.  That is, when switching to herbs for high blood pressure, you have to maintain your diet and exercise and all the other un-fun aspects of managing high blood pressure, just like when you were on lisinopril.

3. Treat starting a herb just like you would starting a pill.  Monitor the effects and how you feel, and realize that herbs cause side-effects just like drugs.  Continuing with the blood pressure example, you still have to keep taking your blood pressure.  If it doesn't stay down where it's supposed to, it's possible you need to stop the herbs and go back on the lisinopril.  It's important to be realistic.  I don't want you to have a stroke out of stubborn optimism.

4. Remember that nothing acts in isolation, and read up on side effects.  For instance, garlic helps blood pressure, but is also a blood-thinner.  If you are taking other blood thinners, like aspirin or warfarin, or if you are scheduled for surgery, or if you are a chef and likely to cut yourself, or if you are pregnant and need to avoid bleeding risks, you should NOT be taking garlic.  Understand how you have to think through the implications of your medicating?

5. Once you've read, understood, thought through, and cautiously introduced yourself to a herb, remember to use it only in a way and and amount that is safe and not to do silly things like taking twice as much, or taking something meant to be used occasionally every day, or combining things that have the same effect, or lying to your doctor about whether you take herbs.  Remember even vitamins can cause trouble when your doctor doesn't know that you are taking them.

Confused yet?  I'll be talking more about being independent with your health in later posts.  Consider this an introduction.  I only have one more piece of advice: get your herbals from the library before you buy them, and get a good field guide to wild plants (with color pictures) before you go picking anything in your yard--and get good at using herbs you buy from reputable sources before you start picking them yourself.  As an example of why this is a good idea, what I always though was nettle turns out to be thistle, according to my field guide.  Nettle is a good herb for pregnancy, but thistle is a good herb if you want to make yourself sterile.  On such mistakes horror stories are built, ok?

On that spooky note, I leave you.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S. Oh, and if you live in America, don't screw around with Chinese herbs.  The ones we can get over here are usually contaminated with various poison substances like lead, or aren't the herb they are labeled as.  I just don't mess with them.

It's...

A Boy!

I have a very definite ultrasound snapshot to prove it.  I was going to post that pic, which the sonographer helpfully typed "it's a boy!" on, but I think I'll sift through for one of the face ones.  My son might get mad at me in the future if I post evidence of his gender on the internet for everyone to see.

So, sonogram photos soon, and now you know.

Cheers,

Breanna

Belly Pics

Tomorrow I should have some ultrasound pictures, but until then, this will have to do:

Just look at the belly.  I don't like pregnancy pictures of myself from the neck up--I get puffy in the face, as a lady at church was once kind enough to point out to me.  I also discovered that 1) this pregnancy I can't wear my contacts 2) I need to grow my hair out, and it's a process and 3) I can't wear makeup without making my zits worse.

But, heigh ho! At least tomorrow we find out whether the kiddo who is treating their mother so cavelierly is a boy or a girl.

Cheers,

Breanna

I Can't Think of a Worse Idea

...than saying God told you to burn the Koran. 

Well, ok, I can think of some ideas that are worse, but I don't want to write them on this blog lest the guy come over here, read them, and decide to:

1. Ride a bike across a tightrope with no net

2. Let a pitbull lick peanut butter off his fingers

3. Throw mud at random people in restaurants

4. Start making claims to be a prophet

5. Utterly ruin the credibility of any Christian, anywhere, who is trying to build any kind of friendship or talk to any Muslim, ever.

Oh wait, maybe he's doing all those things already.  4 and 5 definitely have a familiar ring to them.

Would all the crazies please, please remember that Christ told us to love our enemies--yes, even the ones that persecute and kill us, He was talking about Rome--and pray for those who hate us?  Even if you define Muslims as enemies, you still are not allowed to hurt and insult them, because you self-identify as a Christian, and refusal to treat enemies that way is one of the defining characteristics of the faith.

See, we can't get around it.  We are supposed to love everyone, friends, enemies, everyone.  This doesn't mean you have to agree with everything they do, or that you have to say that all religions are the same (they aren't).  It means you have to recognize that every person is created in the image of God, and so you don't get to despise any of them.

And from a practical standpoint, if I was a Muslim and considering converting to Christianity, why on earth would I do so after watching a crazy guy burn a Koran?  Do you think that watching an imam burn a few hundred Bibles would cause waves of doubt to go through our young people?  Did burning Beatles albums cause great revivals in the 60s?  Did burning books win Hitler any points?

Can I get a supporting call of "bull puckey" from the gallery, please?

Breanna

P.S.

For the record, I own a copy of the Koran in English and am slowly working my way through it, not because I ever intend to convert to Islam, but because I think it's silly not to have actually read the source document of a religion before trying to talk about it.  Otherwise you sound like people who make statments like "doesn't the Bible say the Earth is only 6,000 years old? somewhere on the first page?"

"Hey Mama! I'm Awake!"

Or as Buddy puts it, "Oh!  Wama!  Wamamamamamamamamama! Oh!"

This also means, "I need Cheerios!  Like, NOW!"

Today we are doing nothing much, except somehow (by thunder) vacuuming the living room rug, and making an old-school dinner Mama has been craving:

Pot roast

Mashed potatoes (real)

Carrots

Peas

Homemade bread & butter

Gingerbread

Milk for children, hot tea for adults

A menu looks more elegant when it's centered, everything's on its own line, and you include beverages, doesn't it?

My pot roast recipie in the "America's Test Kitchen" cookbook takes 5 hours.

That's the problem with this otherwise awesome book: everything in it is fabulous, I mean, fabulous, but everything in it requires 1) approximately six pounds of butter and 2) ninety-bajillion hours.  Not really.  There are some fast recipies in here, but usually there is stuff that has to be thought of before you begin cooking, like brining a chicken or starting a marinade.  Most days  I'm together enough to pull this off; some days I am just not.

Anyway, it IS the best pot roast recipie I've found anywhere--makes the meat melt in your mouth--but the five-hour thing means I'd best get my ducks in a row this morning.

It's fall-ish weather here, in case you couldn't guess from the menu.  Hoping that you all are enjoying some of the same, without the nasty hurricanes and such that seem to come with it.

Cheers,

Breanna

So. This Thing Happened.

"Every day God has the rain fall, a plant's roots drink it and turn it into fruit, and men collect the fruit of the plant, crush it, and ferment it into wine.  Every day, God slowly turns water into wine.  Once He bypassed the process.  Every day, in grains of corn that are planted and produce more than themselves, God makes a little bread into much bread.  Once He did it instantaneously and fed five thousand...the miracles are in the same style, so to speak."

--C.S. Lewis

It wasn't at all like this:

It was much more like this:

In other words, I didn't do anything.  Shall we get that clear at the start?

On the other hand, something sort of overwhelming and amazing happened yesterday, and I feel I should, like, tell people.  So here goes.

The Husband and I have had a busy summer and a busy vacation, as have my Mom and Dad, so the Husband decided to take the day off yesterday and invite Dad for a round of golf.  Mom came up too to see the kids, visit me, and have some She-Shopping with me.  (She-Shopping, where you look at lots of things without really wanting to buy any of them, just for the pleasure of browsing, as opposed to He-Shopping.  He-Shopping has been defined as "I'm cold.  I go in a store and buy a coat.  I'm not cold anymore.")

So the boys had a blast in the morning golfing 9 holes, and we had a blast She-Shopping (and I found some instruments for the kids, which Miss Boo calls "Racas"--otherwise known as maracas and drums).  The menfolk decided, after lunch, that they were up for another 9 holes, and we decided to stay home.

While we were shopping, Mom had mentioned that her bad ear has been sore, and could I look at it when we got home.  I have a cheapie, $14 otoscope from Walmart that is designed to check for toddler ear infections, so I said sure.

(This is the ear, by the way, that Mom hasn't been able to hear out of since, in 1990, a series of infections and traumas burst her eardrum and, according to the specialist she saw, dissolved the small bones in her ear that vibrate behind the eardrum.  The specialist said the only way to fix the ear was to have expensive surgery to put in prosthetic bones, which for many reasons Mom elected not to have.)

I look in the ear and see what looks like an infected sore, which looks painful as all get out, and a perfectly intact (though opaque) eardrum.  I've seen Mom's eardrum in this ear before, and it's always opaque.  We assume this is one reason she doesn't hear.  I offer to try to clean up the infection, and Mom says sure, it's hurting all the way down into her throat, and she's ready to stand getting the ear washed out if I think it'll get rid of the infection.

So I looked around the house, because I don't have any proper tools at home--no nice 30cc syringe, no ear tips, no ear spoons, no catch basin, nothing.  We end up trying to sop up as much of the drainage as we could with q-tips (evil as it usually is to put those in your ears), and then I found a 2cc syringe from an old bottle of Baby Motrin that I washed out.  I mixed up a solution of hydrogen peroxide and water and commenced to squirt out Mom's ear, hoping to get the junk to come out.

Well, a tiny scab did come out, but as we're flushing, Mom goes "I can hear."

(I'm still peering into her ear periodically with the $14 otoscope, wondering if there's not an infection in the ear at all but rather in the eustachian tube, since she can pinch her nose and blow and I can see bubbles in the area of the sore.)

We keep flushing until we're not getting any more junk out, but now Mom is feeling drainage inside her head and periodically saying "I can still hear!"

She got a little dizzy, laid on my couch for a bit until the men got back from golf, and keeps saying, dazedly, "I can still hear!"

We go to dinner and she could barely eat because the restaurant was so loud-- "Sound, all around!"  (She hasn't been hearing in stereo since 1990, mind.)

They drove home over the pass.  Her ear popped as they changed pressure and she could still hear.  She could hear everything, she said, even her hair rustling.

This morning she can still hear, and I am as overwhelmed as she is, because listen closely:

There is nothing about flushing out a sore ear with a baby motrin syringe and peroxide that should have made a ear with no bones there to vibrate hear again. 

There's no explanation I can think of.  If the ear healed on its own, like the bones grew back or something (which doesn't seem likely), then why did it suddenly get better, instead of gradually?  If there was some kind of blockage, for twenty years, it doesn't seem likely that a 2cc syringe and a quarter cup of warm peroxide water would dislodge it, does it?  Especially when specialists looking at the ear detected no such thing?  And again, if it was some other structure in the ear that healed on its own, why did the hearing come back suddenly?

It's Mom's opinion that God did a miracle.  After thinking about it all night, I don't have a better explanation--one that covers more of the facts with fewer assumptions; but I emphasize again that I didn't do anything.  I'm not just speaking medically, when I did the equivalent of putting a bandaid on a broken leg.  I mean I didn't pray, or get a sense of holy power, or glow, or anything.  I had two toddlers in the house playing their new drums and Racas for Pete's sake.  I didn't do ANYTHING.

So here is my explanation:

ALL healing comes from God.  We like to assume a paper cut "heals itself", but of course that's nonsense; He has created and sustains our bodies in such a fashion that, most of the time, they heal without our thinking about it much.  While Christ was on earth, and frequently through the Apostles afterward, God chose to heal instantaneously.  I don't believe there's evidence in Scripture to say that God has limited Himself in modern times to only healing through "natural" means; why should He?

That said, until now I've never personally experienced clearly miraculous healings--I've never spoken in tongues, never had holy laughter, or any of those Charismatic experiences, k?  I don't knock them, I've just never experienced them.

I didn't do anything.  I happened to be standing there when my Mom's ear was miraculously healed.

Glory to God!

Breanna

P.S.  Did I mention she can still hear this morning?