Posts Tagged ‘health’
Just Know
This deserves to be a blog post. The question posed was about how to stay positive despite the scary amount of negativity in the world. Far be it from me to come up with a concise reply.
I knew how to answer it for myself, but I had to think a moment, about how to communicate my process to another person. It was a wandering explanation, as each insight I explored seemed to spawn another that deserved mention.
What came to me right at the start was that having a positive disposition isn’t something that I do, it has become something that I know. The rest of my rambling response was an attempt to provide enough background to give the words more weight than just a routine platitude. It doesn’t seem logical to me to offer advice along the lines of just needing to “know” that things are not as bad as they appear to be. On the other hand, does it suffice for me to proclaim that they simply need to live through enough experiences to gather the insights I have acquired?
I don’t think I can reclaim everything I came up with at the time, but the simplified version of why I know things are not as bad as it seems is this:
I have overcome a history of depression. I have mended a dysfunctional relationship with my wife. I have almost completely eliminated my exposure to commercial broadcast media. That alone, probably makes the biggest difference on the amount of unwelcome news and energy that was previously bombarding me.
I have become aware of energy that we emanate and absorb. This one isn’t as ‘out there’ as may appear to some people. Science has proven that emotions are contagious. It is easy to notice that a depressed person in the room can bring people down, an angry person will spread bad feelings, and a happy and pleasant individual can lift the spirits of those with whom they interact. I have witnessed the impressive distance our electromagnetic heart field energy radiates, during my time working with horses in Arizona when I joined Cyndie for the conclusion of her apprenticeship training.
Our energy is a powerful force. We should arm it with something positive and profound. I have always felt in my core that love was the vital component of all human interaction. We know to “love thy neighbor” and many of us believe we should love our enemies. I believe love is the way to heal, to bring peace, to raise healthy individuals, and, radiated in advance, to engender best possible interactions with others. Let love be the primary vibe riding on your projected energy field and you shower all in your vicinity with good will.
All of these things combined, provide a sense of knowing, despite all that seems wrong in the world –and think about it, people have been predicting that the ills of the world indicate ‘the end is near’ for eons– we hold unbelievable power for good with our love that can blossom if we alter our focus from all that is wrong, dwell on all that is right, and develop our skills to radiate healthy love in every direction. It magnifies. Love begets more love.
Try it. You can’t help but have a positive disposition when you put your attention to it!
Choose
.
.
freedom
to choose health
in the face of other options
takes effort
that is rewarded
incrementally
sometimes infinitesimally
over time
do the math
not the science
that it takes
making rockets fly
simple addition
day after day
for months at a time
healthy emerges
for goodness sakes
like green on the grass
running in a river
rounding the rocks
headed toward forever
where life is esteemed
and success of good health
the spectacular garnish
that feeds on itself
in magical ways
running and jumping
with joyous persuasion
returning investments
of health options chosen
turn off that tv
go do something else
break down that routine
be someone else
that unlikely person
you never felt could
emerge from your shell
stuck there for good
just a choice
to be made
inside the mind
there’s reward to be nabbed
free for the choosing
life filled with promise
of better than good
outside the lines
of everyday drab
just beyond reach
of those who don’t try
it’s easy to grasp
for the bold few who do
exercise free choice
to choose better health
not just for a day
but from now on
days-months-years at a time
.
.
It’s Infected
Why did I disregard the training I received long ago, and not take serious action to treat the puncture wound I received on Monday evening? I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I had stepped into a wooden thorn protruding from the bark of a downed tree. It bothered me at work yesterday, and I complained to a coworker about it. She asked if I had done anything about it. I washed it when I took a shower. Other than that, no. I received the “typical man” reply.
After work yesterday, Cyndie and I dove into the chore of clearing the trees off the rise behind the barn where we will be creating a new driving lane. As I was stumbling through the tangle of downed limbs (again, wearing shorts instead of long pants) my legs were suffering new abuses. I, again, complained about the pain from Monday’s thorn. Cyndie asked if I had done anything to treat it.
“No, I didn’t probe the wound, rooting around in search of any leftover thorn fragment.” She offered to disinfect it for me.
As I stepped into the shower, I spotted the inflamed area around the tiny puncture hole.
I guess I should have given this more attention at the time of the incident, like I was trained to do.
If there is any leftover thorn in there, it’s turned to mush now. I did my wimpy, timid best to see if I could get a hold of anything with a tweezers, but to no avail. I resorted to pressing and squeezing around the wound to drain pus. We tried some Hydrogen peroxide, a little rubbing alcohol, and then, an antibiotic ointment.
Luckily, we are not so remote that I can’t just hop in the car and quickly arrive at an urgent care facility. But, that is not an excuse for being nonchalant about caring for wounds that are often considered insignificant. I know better. I intend to use this as a lesson to renew my diligence about giving every assault on my protective shell, proper attention, regardless the perceived seriousness.
New Insight
I awoke with a song in my head. It was a Roches song, but I didn’t know which one. I let the short snippet play round and round, over and over, enjoying it thoroughly, but that still left me wanting.
It took only a few tries to locate the right song, “The Scorpion Lament,” from their album, Keep On Doing. Ahhh. It’s like scratching an itch.
While processing all that, something else was revealed to me this morning. It is probably obvious that we would have a list of things demanding attention here on our new property. – I wonder how long I get to refer to this place as ‘new’ to us. I will probably use that term through the first year, since every day is still new to us, because we have not experienced spring or summer here before.
Anyway, regarding that list, …there are a couple of things that seem to me as though Cyndie should take the lead. When I don’t hear of any results on those, I toss out a few hints, occasional reminders and eventually realize I’m simply nagging.
“Yeah, I could do that.” she accommodates me.
With regard to one particular issue, last night I finally asked her if she needed something else to happen first, as if there was some step in a sequence that hadn’t yet occurred. That is a loaded question, in a way, because she is so classically random, …like the way she mows the lawn.
I was becoming confused with her choosing not to act in cases where it seemed to me it would be something that could be quickly knocked off our to-do list, or at least trigger action that can bring subsequent progress. What was holding her up from taking this step? If she was truly random, things should be able to happen at any time.
That’s it! This morning I realized that her not doing things isn’t the result of waiting on a sequence, it is the very manifestation of her randomness. That is why it doesn’t appear to bother her that a particular step gets done by a certain time. Meanwhile, I grow uncomfortable. I want it to happen in sequence, meaning, do this now, and then other things can follow.
It is why I am bugged by the fact that we suddenly find ourselves working on one thing, when I feel like we haven’t yet finished another. I also realized that after we accomplish some of the random tasks, I don’t get the same sense of satisfaction from having done so, as Cyndie does, because I’m still framing it as having been out of sequence.
Eventually, things work out for both of us, one way or another. We are invested in learning from our styles, and in achieving more together than would be possible, each on our own. I know that I have benefited greatly, over and over, as a result of her randomness through the years.
Our success is the reward that comes from the attraction of opposites, which is accomplished by overcoming the difficulties inherent in being so different from one another!
Sunday Morning
It’s Sunday morning, and the precipitation has yet to start. A glance at the radar reveals it is not far off. We are experiencing a fair amount of wind, and the squirrels and birds seem to be putting in extra effort to consume every morsel in and around the feeders.
Cardinal perched in shelter during our last snowfall
On my agenda is to lounge in the comfort of our warm home, and watch nature do its thing.
A quiet day.
a quiet day
to contemplate
take stock
count blessings
restore
revitalize
stretch and recoil
ponder
what is
what can be
visualize
possibilities
allow them
set them free
.
Feel free to join me, wherever this day has you being. Find your optimal health!
Misled
.
it seems obvious
-the balance of nature-
too much
of a good thing
becomes toxic
absence of bacteria
a problem
so who led us here
to antibiotic-resistant super bugs
food allergies growing common
over-prescribed pharmacological exuberance
inducing increasing psychosis
when even Louis Pasteur himself
proclaimed with his dying breath*
that Beauchamp was right
all along
.
.
*unverified (unverifiable?) claim that can be found promulgated by an always growing number of willing believers
,
“…Pasteur, like many of us, wanted to be successful and prove his theories about dangerous germs were the cause of all human disease. Unfortunately he had an intelligent opposition named Antoine Beauchamp who completely rejected Pasteur’s ideas and put forward that the biological terrain of the being is the cause of disease, not the germ itself. Beauchamp believed that germs and parasites will only survive in acidic and unfavourable conditions and therefore mere exposure to germs is not enough to get sick.
Beauchamp believed,
“The primary cause of disease is in us, always in us.”
Antoine Beauchamp, 1883″
from: http://healthyfran.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/hello-world/
Knowing Better
I do know better, but that doesn’t guarantee success. It is a struggle to resist the dreary weight of “shoulds” and myriad other potential hazards that lurk in the mind of a person with propensities like mine. (See Dysthymia.)
Luckily, knowing better is a very important early step toward optimal health. One of the best things that ever happened for me was having my affliction identified, and then being taught skills for responding to it.
With our new home and property, there are so many things we want to address, it is a challenge to make any sense of it. I feel a bit like I’m in a losing game of “Whac-a-Mole” (a game which, ironically, is based on a situation we are literally needing to deal with here).
I find myself able to chip away at one project until it gets dark, or I run out of time, or I arrive at a problem without immediate solution. Then a new day brings new demands and the previous project lands on the back burner. Who knows when I will get back to that one. Something new will pop up tomorrow!
Now, the Christmas season is near, and a whole new set of make-work projects show up. It troubles me to see the energy that could be put toward our “to-do” list, now going toward decorating this place like it is some sort of holiday show room. Look at that: I’ve become a Scrooge.
I know better than to focus on the dreary perspective. Most people would think the house looks beautiful, and it makes Cyndie so very happy.
Plus, it gives the cats something new to wreck! Oops. See, there I go again. Darn that doom and gloom.
I actually heard a holiday song on the radio yesterday during my drive home that sounded great and made me happy. The reason it sounded great was because it was fresh. I had not heard this song for almost a year. Unfortunately, it is not even December yet. By the time I hear this song again for the 3rd or 4th time, I will be sick of it.
We think the holidays are so fun, it is logical to extend the season as much as possible. Of course, the marketers are all in for that idea, and do everything they can to elongate the duration of a gift-shopping season. In so doing, we have created our own monster. It wasn’t good enough to leave the Christmas season the way it was in years past. It has been stretched into something annoying. You’d think it was a political campaign. What a shame it is that we allow our favorite holiday songs to become annoyances.
They used to be special, because they were heard rarely, for a precious occasion. Over-playing songs diminishes the pleasure of them.
You’d think we would know better.
Delicate Attempt
The results are in, and in my opinion, my performance at yesterday morning’s soccer [futsal] game was a mixture of success and failure. But that is a good thing. It would have been a surprise if it turned out to be just a smashing success. What would that be like, anyway; that I could play just fine with no pain? No, that would fool me into thinking I could go back to my old routine, and all indications point to that being a counterproductive plan of action.
I definitely felt some impairment due to the discomfort of my degenerative disc disease. However, that made it easier to remain very conscious of my situation and helped me to purposefully control my stride. I think I did a pretty good job of running with a very smooth gate, light on my feet, as opposed to the usual pounding I am prone to do. If that made me slower, I was compensating for it a bit by making early decisions about where I was going to go. I headed back into a defensive position much quicker than I would have previously.
That is actually a very smart mindset for me to get into, because now that I think of it, the clomping back to help on defense that I used to do, most often involved me chasing an opponent from behind, too late to do any good.
Although I believe it was entirely serendipitous, one of the successes I enjoyed was scoring goals! I’m generally not a very prolific goal scorer, but I had 4 really good goals that came from being fed beautiful passes when I was positioned on the far side of the net. It provided a nice reward and a feeling that I contributed something positive for having shown up. I think it would be a stretch to say that the attempt to soften my effort for this indoor game was responsible for the uncharacteristic increase in scoring prowess, but the goals sure served to sweeten the morning’s effort for me.
One of the failures of my attempt to play at a slower pace, with less physical impact, was turning the ball over when I had plenty of time to make a decision and execute a play. I just didn’t have my usual touch. Several times, the ball just got lost in my feet. One time, I actually swung to kick, and missed the ball. I was trying to shift my weight and keep my eyes up, and by the time I kicked, the ball had moved. Two times in particular, my turnover led to an immediate goal by the other team.
Another time, I misplayed an attempt to block a shot and it deflected off me, directly into our net. I wondered aloud if that was “a Hays,” because it led to the 5th and winning goal for the opponents, but players assured me it fell outside of the ‘own goal’ act associated with that label. I offered an opinion that it might deserve to be a sub-category.
It was a morning of mixed results, which I am taking as a promising outcome, overall.
Decisions, Decisions
Here we are again, with the clocks adjusted ahead, moving dusk beyond the dinner hour. That means darkness is delayed long enough that chores can be prolonged later into the evening. Oh, joy.
I spent the weekend removing wallpaper from 2 bathrooms. I am really glad that is done. Now I am struggling to figure out how to choreograph the next phases of drywall repair and painting. Ideally, the furniture should be moved to a neutral location, but we haven’t got a room that doesn’t need work.
I have no idea where I am going to end up sleeping.
I will likely have to ask the crews doing the work to break the job up and just do portions at a time. That would allow me to empty some rooms by putting everything into a different room that will be done later.
On the surface, that may not seem like too big a deal, but I am here all by myself, and moving furniture alone is an onerous task, especially with degenerating discs in my spine.
It is less than a year now since I suffered the first symptoms of pain from degenerative disc disease, for which “the first line of treatment is usually to avoid aggravating the condition. Modifying activities to preclude lifting of heavy objects and playing sports that require rotating the back (e.g. golf, basketball or football) can be a good first step.” (from Lumbar Degenerative Disc Disease Treatments by Peter F Ullrich, Jr., MD)
On the subject of not playing sports that involve rotating the back (or pounding up and down the hardwood gym floor), I was considering canceling my membership to the sports club where we play our three-times-a-week morning futsal games, and just quitting cold turkey. I had already reduced my attendance to Mondays and Fridays, but since my most recent flare-up, haven’t played for 3-weeks, and I will have plenty of work to do on preparing the house for showings, and will ultimately be moving to a more rural area that will likely pull me away from the games anyway. It seems to me, quitting now would be a logical thing to do.
But… maybe I have played too many years with these guys to just disappear. Something is keeping me from taking that step that would guarantee the conclusion of my participation. Part of me is wondering about the possibility that I might experiment with altering my level of play to become more conscious of how I move during action. I could practice being light on my feet, and deliberate in my attempts. I will be a bit slower, and probably less effective. I’ll finally start acting my age out there. If I learn to play more prudently, I may be able to prolong my opportunities to mingle with a great collection of friends who share my love of soccer.
That is, until we move out to live with horses.
Food Fits
In my ongoing quest for optimal health, it is only logical that I need to choose a healthy diet. I have been lucky for most of my life to have had the freedom to make menu selections with reckless abandon. I’ve never reacted with any food allergies, and I’m not very persnickety about what goes into the food I eat. I have long practiced sparse usage of butter and salt at the table. I don’t like carbonated drinks, so I rarely drink soda pop. I don’t like coffee, so I don’t get much in the way of caffeine. That gives me a head start over plenty of Americans who have fallen into a pattern of poor choices in their daily diet.
My primary struggle, I thought, was with my penchant for sweet things.
Earlier this month, news reports revealed that scientists are suggesting sugar is toxic and should be taxed and regulated like tobacco and alcohol.
Americans consume on average more than 600 calories per day from added sugar, equivalent to a whopping 40 teaspoons.
Ouch.
But it got worse for me. That report was followed by another, this time from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released about a week later, revealing the top 10 hidden sources of sodium in the American diet.
About 90% of Americans eat more sodium than is recommended for a healthy diet. …Americans eat on average about 3,300 mg of sodium a day. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend limiting sodium to less than 2,300 mg a day, and about 6 out of 10 adults should further limit sodium to 1,500 mg a day.
Guilty. I was aware that I probably was ingesting more salt than I should, in addition to the sweets. What I didn’t realize was that the primary source of sodium wasn’t coming from the salty snacks on which I love to munch. Check out the link to the hidden sources. Bread and rolls are the number 1 source for salt in the American diet! Potato chips, pretzels, and popcorn are way down at the bottom of the 10-worst list.
I have explained before that when I cut down on sweets, I tend to switch to eating more breads. It seems I’ve been moving from one ill to another.
Last week, I finally buckled down and actually read some food labels in an effort to witness this excess of sodium I’m eating. Shocking, I tell you. Shocking! First of all, I discovered that a serving size for bread is one slice. So with every sandwich I make, I’m eating a double serving? I guess my sandwiches are supposed to be open faced. If bread is so loaded with sodium, why the heck doesn’t it taste salty!?
Then I peeked at some cookies a friend gave me. Serving size: 2 cookies, sodium: 120mg. That’s 5% of the recommended daily allowance, right there. But these cookies are really, really good. Irresistibly good. I ate 6. That’s 360mg of sodium. They sure didn’t taste salty. Too bad that I was eating these as a chaser for my main course of pizza… number 3 on the evil list.
Next I looked at the boxes of cereal in my cupboard. They are all lined up so I can easily compare and most appear to be in a range from the best of 60mg (Shredded Wheat) up to 200mg. Then comes my long-time favorite, 100% natural, whole grain wheat with barley, Post Grape-Nuts at a whopping 12% of my daily sodium, 290mg.
I looked closer. The majority of those cereals define their serving size at 1 Cup, but a few switch to 3/4 Cup just to make it interesting. Then comes good ol’ Grape-Nuts. That heaviest dose of sodium is coming from the smallest serving size of 1/2 Cup! I’m pretty sure I’ve been getting about 25% of my daily sodium every time I eat those crunchy nuggets of goodness.
If I’m going to get that much sodium, I would prefer that it taste salty to fulfill that craving. Pass me the Cheez-Its. This healthy diet thing is going to be a struggle.
Relative Something 