Archive for Health
Wild Wonderful Women on Wine Wednesdays
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Do you feel better about any and all of lifes problems after you’ve gotten coffee/beer/a glass of wine with your girlfriends?
I got one of those forwarded emails today from a girlfriend so I have no idea where this really came from, who to credit or if it’s really scientific or not, but I loved the idea and I think it’s true so I’m going to expand on the theory.
It starts here: “I just finished taking an evening class at Stanford. The last lecture was on the mind-body connection-the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things shecould do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends. At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.”
Ok, well we know the reason that men live longer when they marry the caretaker genre of humans. Wives will make them take their vitamins, drink less beer and tequila shots, more red wine for their heart. We encourage them to get a regular sleep routine, many (not all) ladies like to cook or if not that we at least know where to get the decent fast food versus frozen pizza’s, canned spaghetti and pigs in a blanket food repertoire that single men usually subsist on.
So, what is it about getting together with other ladies that might make us healthier?
The email goes on to say “Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality “girlfriend time” helps us to create more serotonin-a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being.”
This makes a ton of sense to me. We all know the stereo typical description where when we share our problems with men and they seek to fix them but when we share our problems with our women friends it’s a totally different process. We ladies tend to delve into the subtext, the feelings, the what if’s, the worst case scenario’s and then as a friend we move into the “it’s gonna be ok phase”. This consists of sharing our ideas for how to deal with it, we help slam the wrong doer, X, mean mother in law or whoever is causing the distress in our friends lives.
“Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings? -rarely. Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters/mothers/daughters, and evidently that is very good for our health.”
I recognize that this is a generalization and that many men do have close friendships/relationships with their father/brother/son/friends but the majority of their conversation would be about the problems themselves and here’s the action steps to take to fix it.
“He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.” (Now there’s some news we can use ladies) “There’s a tendency to think that when we are “exercising” we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends,we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged–not true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking!
If you are an empty nester and especially if you raised girls and no longer have them around then this is probably even more important. I know how much I miss my chit chat time with my daughters and when we get together the men in our lives know that they might as well bring a book to read because it’s going to be a very tough fight to get a word wedged into our banter.
So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky.”
So be forewarned my lady friends (in real life) that I’ve forwarded this to, I plan on re-instituting my WWWWW ladies nights this spring/summer. What’s the WWWWW you ask?
Wild Wonderful Women on Wine Wednesdays
That’s the traditional Ladies Night Out at the local watering holes in my neck of the woods, and I used to set these up via an Evite and they were fantastic fun. The crowd dwindled so I gave up the boat and stopped inviting but now that I know how important it is for our health, I’m going to revive the tradition. Be watching for a Facebook Invite (and an Evite for my non-FB obsessed friends) in April of 2011.
Now spread the word ladies and set up your own mental health ladies nights in your neck of the woods. I’d love to hear your thoughts and if you have an idea to add, please comment below. I moderate the comments within 24 hours.
I Love Starbucks
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I just had to say it out loud! I know it’s such a cliche’ but I really do just love Starbucks! Everything about it… somehow if I start my day off or take my mid-morning Starbucks trek, my whole day is happier, brighter and more jubilant that other days. I really don’t know for sure what the magical power is there, I didn’t even drink coffee my entire life before Starbucks. My 6th grade daughter introduced me to the heart attack waiting to happen Caramel Frappuccino at the Safeway Starbucks in our town eight years ago and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve changed orders to a Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato 1 pump non-fat with a caramel swirl drink most times.
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
I’m just NOT a hot drink person unless it’s really REALLY cold out and it rarely is in Colorado. It used to be an exciting Holiday tradition that I’d share with my theater daughter and all of her friends when the Gingerbread Latte’s came out on November 1st. We’d arrange a meetup and thoroughly relish our first taste of this scrumptious holiday treat. Starbucks this year however, ruined that for us by changing the entire formula and as far as I’m concerned RUINING the drink.. what the heck ARE those little foreign objects they decided to sprinkle on top?? YUCK!! They call them caramelized ginger sprinkles, but they tasted like nasty dead gummy bear pieces… I did twitter @starbucks my dissatisfaction with this change and hopefully other’s were upset with the changes as well, we’ll see come this November. I also miss their
7 layer bars that were discontinued awhile back. My usual bakery treat is either the Cranberry Orange Scone or the new Oatmeal cookies that have the raisin cranberry fruit mix that they use for their oatmeal optional add-ins now.
Even with this faux pax I still just love my Starbucks times. I don’t know what it is, the colors, the lighting, the smells, the sound of the coffee makers, the hustle bustle of the other Starbuckians as they come in. I love it when the servers start to know your order and when you enter you are greeted by name, I love that they finally give customers some free internet access while you are there… it’s a bit tricky to figure out at first, you have to purchase a gift card, register the gift card, sign up for the service and then use the registered gift card at least every 30 days (hello! not too hard to do in my case.. more like every 30 hours) and then you get 2 hours of internet access a day, and it’s
decently fast internet access too so that’s cool!
My favorite Starbucks location has several umbrella tables in a corner a bit protected from the wind on two sides and surrounded by crab apple tree’s and perennial flowers… the little birds show up looking for dropped crumbs, people bring their dogs, our Starbucks provides a water dish for customers four legged friends and everyone is just happy there, I guess that’s why I love it there. They have also ruined me for other coffee drinks… If it doesn’t taste pretty close to the Bucky version then I just have iced tea or something else.
- Image by Earl – What I Saw 2.0 via Flickr
For some reason the noise and the atmosphere provides a great place for me to work. When I’m working from my “home office” I can always get distracted by chores to do, things to put away, phone calls, etc. but at Starbucks I seem to get LOTS of work done.. that is unless friends come by which happens often, but that is also one of the reasons I like my Starbucks office is that I get out and among people. Working from home sounds great! but one of the drawbacks is the isolation factor.. so that’s probably one of the reasons I can be so productive there.
However work isn’t the ONLY thing I like to do when I go to Starbucks… it’s also one of my favorite spots to read. I belong to a wonderful ladies book club and always have at least one book I’m reading and I usually end up at the last day before our meeting to discuss it with several chapters to go so it’s the perfect excuse to get away from my distractions, find the cozy comfy chair in the corner, or the patio chair outside in the sunshine and finish my assigned book.
My husband was told that his cholesterol was high and I’d heard something about coffee being bad for your cholesterol. Now I could get him to eat some chicken instead of burgers, do more cardio instead of only weights but take away his morning coffee??? that was NOT going to happen so I started to research the subject. It seems that non-filtered coffee does indeed raise your cholesterol. This makes NO sense to me since you think of cholesterol issues being caused by meat/milk products, but here is what I discovered. The latte’s, macchiato’s, frappachinos are all made with espresso which is EXPRESSED from the coffee bean much the way french press is made, these drinks are all bad for your cholesterol if you have those issues. What you CAN have are Misto’s. Misto’s are simply brewed coffee with steamed milk. They taste pretty much the same and you can also have them flavored, hot or iced and they are also a little less expensive than it’s latte counterpart.
I am getting to the end of my free two hours here so I’m off to a great start today! What’s your favorite thing about Starbucks? favorite drink?
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Have high blood pressure? high calcium levels?
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photo credit: pasotraspaso
This is my two week post op report card, and it’s a good one!
The first week was rough, I’m sure just due to the effects that any surgery has on your system along with hormone and blood chemicals all flying up and down, but now at two weeks post op from my parathyroidectomy I am feeling MUCH better.The symptoms that were IMMEDIATELY fixed are:
- my blood pressure is now totally normal, all the time
- normal bladder control (pre-op I ALWAYS had to pee and could barely make it in time)
- bone and muscle pain GONE!
- I have lost 7 pounds (yeah!)
- digestion MUCH improved
- Sex Drive back… (double yeah!)
Still to go:
I am currently REALLY emotional, I didn’t have the mood swings when I was pre-op like some people do, but I am having them now… I’m thinking it has to do with the parathyroid having to adjust itself.
I still get a little shakey when I don’t get my calcium. I had an appointment with my Endocrinologist on Tuesday and he has me on 1000 milligrams of calcium 4x a day along with a prescription for Vitamin D that I take once a week. I am also scheduled for a bone density scan in two weeks to see how much damage has been done to my bones during this calcium leaching period of God only knows how long. After he looks at that and determines the results he’ll redo my levels.
I am musing that perhaps my weight gain over the last two years and onset of menopause symptoms including rapid weight gain for now apparent reason may have to do with the fact I read on my synthyroid medication I picked up yesterday. (I also have Hashimoto’s Thyroid Disease) It says not to take it with calcium… so I’m wondering if that was/is part of the reason for the weight gain (Hashimoto’s is hypo thyroid) is that the synthyroid couldn’t really do it’s job to help regulate my metabolism with my calcium levels being constantly so high in my blood stream. Only time will tell.
All in all the results of the parathyroidectomy are a huge success. 
Read all my previous posts on this journey
Pt 5: 2 Days Post Operative
pt 4: Tomorrow is Surgery Day
pt 3: Consultation with the Surgeon
Definition :
“Parathyroidectomy“
Parathyroidectomy is surgery to remove parathyroid glands or parathyroid tumors. Parathyroidectomy is recommended when one or more parathyroid glands are producing excessive amounts of parathyroid hormone.
Humility – What’s your definition?
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I heard this quote once and it’s stuck with me… Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself… It’s thinking OF yourself LESS! (unknown)
It’s deep so say it to yourself a couple of times!
This just struck me as so true. Humbleness and humility is spoken of often in the bible but I think its one of those misinterpreted words. We all speak of Jesus as humble but He knew He was the son of God so it wasn’t that he thought less of Himself, he just thought of others first, what he could do for others, how he could help others, how he could change the lives of others. Being humble is a sign of strength not weakness and comes from a place of knowledge not ignorance.
There is also another similar quote and goes something like ” you’d worry less about what other’s think of you if you knew how little they think about you”. Most people in our society are much more obsessed with themselves and really don’t spend as much time analyzing us as we might think they do. We sometimes beat ourselves up about something we’ve done, something we’ve said and we let that story teller in our heads go on and on about it until we are afraid to show our face at work the next day when in reality no one else has been thinking about it at all.
What’s your favorite quote today? Why does it speak to you?
photo credit: André Banyai
How NOT to go to the ER after parathyroid surgery
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I woke up on day 3 post op and started having muscle cramps in my shoulder, leg, arm, my lips and finger tips were tingling… these were things my surgeon had told me to watch for. We called the surgeons office and he told me to see my regular doctor… so called my General Practitioner, not really understanding why since I haven’t seen my GP for weeks, but got in two hours later. On the ride in the car there the cramping started getting worse and worse, I was tingling and having muscle cramps & spasms all down the left side of my body and it started cramping my diaphragm which made it feel difficult to breathe. After explaining that my surgeon had said to watch for this my regular doctor didn’t know what to do, and didn’t have the ability to run lab results quickly, so she called 911 and had me go to the emergency room in an ambulance… At this point the cramping and numbness or “buzzy” feeling is getting worse and worse.. partly due to the low level of calcium in my body and the other due to me getting more and more upset and freaked about the cramping.. I got there and had to repeat everything once again to the ER staff that I’d told to the Hunky firemen that drove me to the hospital… uugggghhh..
I was sure I was having a stroke or a heart attack at this point, my fingers started cramping up like I had severe arthritis… and it felt like a huge weight was on my chest. All my vitals were normal but I was still having all these symptoms.
How to not have all of this happen? If you start feeling muscle cramps or numbness, eat another tums! Calcium with Vitamin D, etc… The surgeon should have told me that rather than just warning me to watch for these symptoms and then sending me to the doctor that was clueless. (not her fault, this isn’t her specialty and it was impressive that she caught the condition in the first place) When the doctor in the ER finally came into the room he said.. oh yeah… that’s common with this type of surgery, (Removal of an adenoma on your parathyroid gland) just take more calcium. Duh!
What’s really maddening was that I had that “womens intuition” that you’d think at this age I’d be wise enough to listen to and I thought when I first started having the muscle cramps… “I wonder if I should just take some more calcium” but I was afraid to over do the calcium and figured if it was that easy it would have been on my post op instructions.
Before the ER staff could get it together I closed my eyes and prayed… “God, help me“…. I started feeling large hands on my head, cradling it and the numbness and muscle cramping started lessening, starting at my diaphram the cramping diminished, the pressure lessened, and the tingling felt like it was being drawn out of my body to my head and out….. within 5 minutes I was almost none of the previous symptoms and just a touch of numbness in my lips and fingertips. Was it God? Did my body just re-regulate its hormone and calcium levels on it’s own? Next time… I plan on praying FIRST!
Pt 5: 2 Days Post Operative
pt 4: Tomorrow is Surgery Day
pt 3: Consultation with the Surgeon
pt 2: Appointment with the Endochronologist
pt 1: I thought it was just Menopause
Definition :
“Parathyroidectomy“
Parathyroidectomy is surgery to remove parathyroid glands or parathyroid tumors. Parathyroidectomy is recommended when one or more parathyroid glands are producing excessive amounts of parathyroid hormone.
