Eat like a cave man....

This week in class, we were discussing the Paleo-diet, or Stone Age diet.  It was pretty interesting reading, but I won't bore you with the exciting details (pages and pages.....).  However, I will bore you with what I gleaned from it all.

The Stone Age (or paleo-diet) is stupid.  Of course, so is the grapefruit diet, the rice diet, the smoothie diet, ......  The problem is, we have a huge number of people who are very over-weight or obese, and these folks are becoming sick with diseases like type II diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, oh, and the list just go on and on.  I know why, though.

We are busy.  Did you realize that families with young children end up eating about 20-30% of meals in their car?  We just don't have time to sit around the table and eat, much less cook the food ourselves.  The kids have soccer practice, band practice, karate, guitar lessons, and on and on.

We are busy.  Go to the grocery store and stock up on fresh meat, veggies, fruit and then go home and cook a meal everyone wants to eat?  Get outta here....

We are busy.  Hey, I know!  Let's go by McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Schlotzky's, Burger King, Dairy Queen, Church's Fried Chicken, and get dinner.  It'll be so much easier, right?

We are busy.  At the end of the week, the last thing we want to do is cook.  I just want to sit in front of the TV and mindlessly eat big bowls of ice cream or popcorn or chocolate or french fries .... the list does go on and on.

What ever happened to common sense?  Oh, yeah, I ate it and washed it down with a 48 ounce cola.

Love, 365

Never, ever.

Ugh.....(image from toonvectors.com)

I have been a bad, bad girl.  Letting myself get caught up in other stuff & procrastinating class assignments.  I started out good, reading the material on Monday, when it's first available.  Read some more during the week, but waited until last night to write my discussion post......when the migraine came on.  Had to hurry through the post so I could finish puking and go to bed.  I will never ever wait until Friday to write my post again.  Never.      Ever.

I
Hate
Migraines.

Once I have one, I simply have to sleep.  I've never had a medication that helped.  They come on too fast, and when they happen I become very nauseated and can't drink anything.

So, lesson learned!!!

Writing, writing, writing.......

Images: Google

Well, I don't smoke anymore...but I thought the look on her face mirrors my own.  "How do I start?  Will it make sense?  Can I stretch it to 2 pages?"  

When I began this class, I had no idea that there would be so much writing.  I figured like most classes there would be quizzes & tests & a bit of writing.  And, although I don't miss quizzes and tests, the writing is soooo difficult.  The most difficult part is understanding what the Prof. wants.  And apparently he wants us to show we read the material, and give our opinions about it.  Which is cool, I guess.  I've posted 5 so far, with good results. I recall another class where we had to write a lot, and I complained then too.  And figured that it would be great practice if I had another class like it.  No.  No, it didn't help at all, because the *#%*^ parameters are different.  But the material is great.  Evolutionary medicine will help our Dr's and health care professionals treat our problems more effectively....eventually.  

Otherwise, all is going along.  Romeo is still having hits & misses with his culinary endeavors.  Last week he made green chile stew....with bacon.  Sounds good, right?  Except he didn't precook the bacon, so it was slimy and digusting.  I ate around the bacon as well as I could, but no one ever went back for seconds, so it was thrown out.  I think we need to discuss doing ONE new idea per week instead of 3 or 4!  

He had asked me to buy bell peppers in order to make stuffed peppers for dinner, which is fairly straight forward.  Only the bell peppers were humongous. I've never seen an entire bin of green peppers that were all so huge.  I bought them with reservations.....figuring he might be a bit upset if I didn't get them....you know, they were on the "list".  He made them on Saturday, and we finished them off for dinner on Sunday.  When I say they were huge, I wasn't exaggerating.  On the plus side, they were very good!

Let's try a little humor.....

and finally.....

Did Neanderthals leave behind abstract art?

From Science Daily, 9/4/14.

This is a first ~ rock engravings by Neanderthals.  Buried under sediment at the back of a cave, subsequently dated 39,000 years old, and was found in Gibraltar.  It's significant because it's the first example found of Neanderthal cave art.  Boy, do the Neanderthals get a bad rap from science, although it's improved in the last decade ~ from the heavy brow ridge and shown hairy as a gorilla, he has been "updated" to looking very much like us.  

From the Smithsonian

I tried to find a drawing of how science used to view Neanderthals, but I couldn't find one.  Drat!

They used to be depicted as dumb, strong brutes, that had no language or culture.  We have since discovered that they were very much like Homo Sapiens...have a look at the "family tree".

I know this is rather small & hard to see ~ The Neanderthals are just below and to the right of the "you are here" circle.  For a larger view go here...

Now for my interpretation of the cave art.......
Doesn't it look like a tic-tac-toe game?  

Maybe they were just waiting for the weather to improve before going hunting.

Love, 365

Car remote ...... broken. No biggie, right?

Nah, mine doesn't look quite like this, but similar....(courtesy Google images)

As you might have already guessed, my remote stopped working last week.  Every day I would get home, telling myself I would replace the batteries.  But, then something would happen, and the result is a whole week before I finally got around to it.  Except....when I opened the the case, I had a couple of tiny little pieces fall out, and after I put it back together, it didn't work.  At least I have another one, and after replacing the batteries, it worked just fine.  

What really surprised me was just how dependant I had become on it.  I would keep forgetting that I couldn't walk away and lock it, I had to keep going back and locking manually....and then I would check at least 2 doors to make sure it "took".  Funny ~ I wouldn't have thought that I would feel more secure on the "beep" of the car horn than manually locking it.  I guess I've become more secure in technology than I thought!  I kept feeling irritated that I had forgotten to fix my remote, then feeling ridiculous that I trusted my remote more than locking with my own hand!  Weird.  

Considering they are now 12 years old, and have been dropped, stashed in my bag with no thought, been wet from rain and other hazards, I feel lucky that it worked as long as it did.  Maybe the remaining remote will last long enough to get me to a new vehicle in 3 to 4 years.....

Love, 365

Breast cancer update (evolutionary medicine info)

(courtesy of Google images ~ I'm so done with Bing......)

First I'll bore you with this:

"Although comparative rates are difficult to obtain, one study estimates that the rate of breast cancer for industrialized nations, where birth control is practiced and childbearing is limited and deferred, is as high as 100 times the rate for women who are not using contraception and are spending the bulk of their reproductive lives pregnant or nursing in patterns that result in lactational amenorrhea (Eaton et al. 1994). For these women, the hormonal milieu to which they are most commonly exposed is high progesterone rather than high estrogen. Eaton and his colleagues suggest that hormonal interventions (not unlike those with oral contraceptives) that delay menarche or reduce the number of menstrual cycles may provide protection against the reproductive cancers described above (Eaton et al. 2002). "  *Wenda Trevathan, Evolutionary Medicine, New Mexico State University, Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology, 2007

Ok ~ so this stuff interested me as a breast cancer "survivor" (meaning, I haven't gotten past my 5 year mark yet, although I fully expect to).  There is more information than this, but it's really long, and probably not interesting to many.  The bottom line: modern women in developed countries (like ours) have too many periods.  You know, cycles.  We are exposed to over 400 highs and lows of estrogen/progesterone.  Ugh.  Now, I never took birth control pills, because I couldn't remember to take them regularly, so I used a more antiquated birth control solution ~ the lovely diaphram.  So much fun, let me tell you.  My gynecologist did prescribe "hormone replacement therapy" for me, which I took for a little over a year...then I had my cancer diagnosis, and wondered if that had anything to do with it.  Probably not.  I really didn't take it very long.  Until truly effective means of birth control were available, what we did was nurse a child....for a long time.  According to the study, foraging populations would have a total of approx. 5.9 children ( ~ don't you just love the decimal there?) and would lactate for a total of 17 years. This means that each child would be nursed for about 2.8 years.  Can you imagine the outcry of the general populace if a child were breast fed for that long?  Anyway, doing that is out of the question.  So, now our contraceptive people are working on developing a pill that would reduce the number of cycles to 4 in one year rather than 11 to 12, which might be a good idea.  This class (Evolutionary Medicine in case you weren't aware, or paying attention ~ and why would you, anyway???) is really fascinating.  In a keynote address by Dr. Randolph Nesse, he mentioned that the number of men taking testosterone therapy is increasing, and wonders what the ramifications of that would be.  

You would think we would have learned the lesson from the huge number of women who did take hormone replacement therapy for a long time ~ and ended up with all kinds of problems like: cancer, stroke, heart attack, gall bladder disease, blood clots...and yet when you put in your search engine "the negative consequences of hormone replacement therapy" you get articles that give you the pro's and con's ~ and they really seem to be downplaying the con's in my opinion......well, I suppose it is a competely individual decision to go on it or not.  The point of evolutionary medicine is that there is a delicate set of checks and balances that you may or may not want to fuck around with.  

Love, 365

Depression.....anxiety......got any prozac?

Image stolen from: izismile.com

In case you haven't carefully considered the above cartoon, look again........you see it?  Everyone is thinking they are totally inadequate/behind the times/lame/stupid/not living up to your potential, etc.  And yet, when we are feeling these feelings, we are focused only on ourselves.  That's the way it works.  Because rarely do others admit that they feel inadequate~lame~etc.  I know when I feel this way, I certainly don't admit it to most of the people I know.  I tried to explain it to my Mom once, and after a lengthy silence on the phone, she basically told me to get over it.  Yeah, my Mom ain't no psychiatrist (and probably doesn't think they could help anyway, nothing's as good as giving those bootstraps a good yank).  So this is how I live, when I feel depressed or anxience, I give myself a good talking to......."look at all your blessings!  You have a nice place to live, you're never hungry, no one beats you up, etc, etc"  Sure, it helps.  All of that is true. But how do I tell my inner voice to stop saying "you're a loser"?  

I'm coming out of the closet.

Even when writing in this blog, I make sure to not dwell on the negatives.  I'm hiding.  I want to show a brave, happy face.  All is well!  See???

I've been giving all of this more thought than it deserves, following the death/suicide of Robin Williams.  It just got me thinking about it more.  

Don't get me wrong ~ I'm not considering suicide.  Far from it.  What I want is to feel confident.  That I'm worthy of respect.  That I deserve to feel happy.  To quit feeling like I just don't measure up.  

I'm aware of it....I just can't quite figure out how to stop being so negative to myself, when I work so hard to be constructive when giving advise to someone else.  Ironic, isn't it?  And very very frustrating.  I continue to work on it...and it does help to realize that, like the cartoon up there, I'm not alone in feeling this way.

Love, 365