more thoughts about my health

This past weekend I spent some time with my dear friend Dana.  As usual, we found a lot of things to talk about and I didn't get home until pretty late.

One of the topics was about (my) health.  We talked about an attempt we made a couple years ago for our group to become more health conscious.  This was called Healthy Pigs, because it was during the Year of the Pig.  The group met approximately once a month, pot luck style, and everyone was supposed to bring a healthy dish, or a healthier version of dishes we always had.  For instance, Lawrence made a version of his almond jello with lower calorie ingredients.  We each set goals-- mine was to lose 20 lbs. for the year, which I actually achieved.

Unfortunately, not everyone took their goals seriously, and although the dishes individually were healthier, the quantities were too much.  The meetings became less frequent, and within a couple of months in the next cycle (now renamed The Rats That Roared, in honor of The Year of the Rat), we gave up.  And I quickly regained the 20 lbs. and more.

We've started talking about resurrecting this effort in some form.  Let's see how it goes.

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The biggest problem I have with plain old exercising is that it's boring.  Although I may be able to coax myself into going to a gym, the repetition is mind-numbing.  If the accomplishment is measured by the number of repetitions, I will quickly lose interest.  I admire the folks who can read magazines while on the exercise equipment-- although I'm reasonably coordinated, my reading comprehension would be pretty low while I'm pedalling away.

So, having said that, last week I started going to Sun's fitness center again, twice a week for now.  Elliptical, I'm only good for 15 minutes.  I can probably go a little longer, but I don't want to go too hard just starting out.  The bigger problem is I'm having trouble regulating my heart rate.  At my age, the workout max is ~145bpm, but mine has gone to ~165 for minutes at a time.  (My resting heart rate is actually pretty good, in the low 60s.)

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The reason I like participating in sports like tennis and volleyball is that it's interactive and somewhat unpredictable.  Even if you don't have the same amount of ability, you still have a chance if you can out-think and out-wit your opponents.  Ping pong is more enjoyable than a treadmill, and can be quite a workout.  I'll play just about anything that involves a ball and a stick.  The problem with sports is getting enough friends together on a regular basis.  Over the years, as more and more friends got married and started families, their availability became a lower and lower priority.

There are other physical activities I enjoy, like snow skiing.  But this one is more about the scenery and less about the physical exertion.  I much more enjoy fast gliding than I do the bumps.  It's a lot of work jumping around moguls, and getting up after falling (which for me happens often when navigating bumps).  Not too many of my friends can take off a weekend anymore (that family priority thing again), although last season a bunch of the families took a ski trip together, many of the same families that I went camping with a couple of weekends ago.

Some alternatives I'll probably consider are hiking and biking.  There are lots of local biking and hiking trails. 

My brother-in-law Jaime started biking not long ago, and he looks great, trimmer than before.  He's gone a bit hard-core, though-- he's been doing some long road courses.  He has espoused its virtues to me, and has even said he'd deliver a bicycle to me if I wanted.  My friends Frances and Cliff (used to?) go off-road biking and have invited me in the past.

Even "urban hiking" is ok, as long as it's not just me.  The good thing is that, unless you're doing a really strenuous walk/hike, you can have a fairly stimulating (for the mind) conversation at the same time.

To bring this full circle, I think Dana tricked me.  She lives in The City, pretty close to restaurants and Chinatown.  We walked to dinner, but walked back and forth along a few blocks under the premise of choosing where to go.  I think she knew where she wanted to eat on the first or second time, but got me to walk maybe an extra quarter mile while we considered our options.

Bam! (Or, Turning 50... So Far)

I actually don't care much about birthdays, at least not my own.  I mean, it's not like you turn a certain age and BAM! your life changes.  Well, ok that might be true for certain ages (16, 18, 21 immediately come to mind) but I'm long past those.  I do like celebrating birthdays though, mainly for the excuse to get together with my friends and family.

This year I turned the big 5-0.  It was so big, there were parties and other events on 2 consecutive weekends.  I really have to pat myself on the back: I could not have chosen a better family or set of friends.  I was pleasantly surprised when my family decided to come up from San Diego, especially because of my dad.  He got rid of the travelling bug long ago after 20 years in the Navy, and since he's getting up there he doesn't get around very well on his own.

(a little reminder to myself: write more about the circumstances surrounding all the parties, and more about the parents...)

Not long after turning 50, I woke up one day with what felt like a sprained ankle.  I just thought that maybe I slept in a funny position and cut off the circulation.  But it got worse and worse over the next few days, and strangely had moved from the ankle down to the heel.  I even worked the next week from home just to stay off of it.  Finally, I went to go see a doctor.  (If you know me, you'd know that's a big deal.)  The diagnosis was tendonitis of the achilles.  (It turns out that the treatment I had been giving for what I thought was a sprain, soaking my feet in hot water to increase the circulation, was exactly wrong for treating tendonitis, which needed to be iced.)  The next week, after the ice, my foot felt great.  Then the week following, I woke up one day and it was bad, so bad that I couldn't put any weight on it.  That followup doctor visit became more extensive-- walk around on crutches, get my blood/urine/stool analyzed.  (Blood tests have always been a bit traumatic for me, but it actually wasn't so bad this time.  Urine test, no big deal: just piss in a cup.  Stool test is kinda weird-- you float a piece of paper in the bowl, dump on that, "swab" the feces.  Just thought you'd like to know, in case you ever wondered.)

Within a few days, the test results were in, and in This Modern Age, were available online.  Most of the numbers looked ok to me, but what do I know.  In the next doctor visit, she did the interpretation.  The ankle issue is likely gout.  (Gout?  Didn't they eradicate that in the era of sulfa drugs?)  So here's the BAM! part:

• cholesterol's too high
• blood pressure's too high
• BMI is in the "morbidly obese" category
• borderline diabetic
• pre-osteoporosis
  

Yeesh.  It all comes down to this: adjust the diet, get more exercise, and lose weight.  It's not like I didn't see it coming.  And it's not like my good friends and family hadn't mentioned it.  I'd always used a combination of denial ("I don't want to see a doctor because I don't want to hear what he's going to tell me") and a lot of faith in my body's ability to deal with the crud I was feeding it.  Despite not being a trained medical professional, I've always been able to figure out on my own what my body needed, and how to get well when I got sick.  I'd always thought, I know I'm going to have to eat more sensibly at some point, but until then I'm going to eat what I want and enjoy it with no guilt.  (I'm generally a guilt-free person, which probably makes me a not-very-good Catholic...)

The doctor has scared me to life (which isn't to be confused with being scarred for life).

• reduce portions
  
• cut down on sweets
• cut down on salt intake
• cut down on red meat (this is the tough one for me)
• brown rice instead of white rice
• whole wheat bread instead of white bread
• eat more fruits and vegetables
• reduce milk from 2% down to 0% (this one's going to be tough, too)
• avoid fried and otherwise processed foods
  
• aerobic exercise 3-4 times a week, 30 minutes of elevated heartrate
  

I'm working on it, making small strides.  Fortunately, I'm not so far gone that I need to do anything particularly drastic.  I've been prescribed hypertension medicine, and am taking Vitamin D supplements, which hopefully are temporary until I get the weight down-- the weight is the key to everything.  It is obviously directly related to the cholesterol and the BMI, but it's also affecting the my body's ability to break down the uric acid (gout) and metabolize the Vitamin D in the milk (osteoporosis).

The journey begins.