Health & Fitness May 2015

[Nancy]

Did 2 walks 2day.

[Harriet]

Glad you have a good relationship and communication with physio therapist, Kathryn. Also that her suggestions have credibility with you - that's hugely important.

Nancy, you are really getting in the walks. I got out in the sun and did chicken chores today while they scattered for bugs.

lucylee is struggling with airborne allergens - just thinking how discouraging that must be when weather is pretty. Hope it is short lived.

more allergy - Mosquito moment for dd turned into an impossible day when the hugely swollen bite at knee (dessert plate sized) kept her from straightening her leg. Talked at length to new pharmacist, who is from Africa. She says that garlic eating affecting whether mosquitoes bite you is a myth according to those in her hometown. She says "we eat a boatload of garlic in our cuisine and mosquitoes still bother us terribly." She says benedril should be only by mouth and cortisone itch creme on the bite itself. She says benedril itch cream can cause a mosquito bite to get worse!

Better report on how the nutri bullet and I are getting along. We are friends. Last 3 uses have been sputter-free. I think there is a tip to fill way below the max fill line.

In fact, I had both breakfast (whole foods shake) and snack (greens, half-apple, carrot, celery, a few berries) using the nutri bullet today.

Sleep is becoming a huge issue as I lose my grip on bedtimes again. I will use the weekend to try to pull myself back up by my slipper-straps again.

Could no longer resist Joel Fuhrman's new book The End of Dieting. Was going to wait for the paperback but I was reading in Amazon's "look inside" feature and it was just too compelling. I'll call it my late Mother's Day present to myself.

I suppose that is a warning that I'll be back in "let me tell you what I read" mode again.

[Lynlee]

re garlic and mosquitoes - there are many who promote it here - from Indonesia - in to rinse clothes in it.

I've missed the last 2 weeks of tiachi. There is only a couple of weeks left. I'm wondering do I even complete the beginners class. My shoulders are worse for it. I think overuse when there is so much repetition trying to get a particular move just so. I think I'll get myself back to the shorter 1hr classes. Sat class at church was not on today. I think I heard the instructors interstate fil was very ill, so maybe he is away, or classes have totally stalled.

[Nancy]

Bs was #303 when I got up was down to #274 I was happy.

Did 10 mi. On ex. Bike and watched tv preacher this a.m.
did some groc. Shopping & spiffed up kitchen & swept steps outside on the drive way for activity plus 2 trips downstairs for laundry too.
bs was #151 before dinner.
Got calcuium chews and mulitvits for my age group today I had been out.

[lucylee]

Do any of y'all know anything about this product -- J uice P lus? They have gummy vitamin type things... capsules... and juice mixes for shakes/smoothies.
I have a friend who is really, REALLY enthusiastic about it, and keeps encouraging me to try. It's kind of expensive, but she swears it has changed her life.

[LadyMaverick]

LucyLee - The Juice Plus selling is strong here too. It is a MLM (which isn't bad but explains the passion driven sellers). One of my friends who is selling JP gave me samples to try. I thought they tasted good, however LO hated the taste and wouldn't take them. We ended up tossing the remaining samples out. I've been told the yearly JP cost is around $500. The high cost plus LO dislike for it made the JP decision an easy one for me. We returned to our OTC vitamins.

I am not happy with my weight. I keep bounce up/down the same 7 lbs. Night eating (after getting kids to sleep) remains my worst habit. I haven't found a way to solve that ......yet.

[lucylee]

Boy... passion driven is the right word for it. Good grief. AND... I mentioned dgs's excema, which she is certain this will cure... and now, for the capsules and the gummies for dgs, I will be in over $1200 per year!!! (She said all but one set of gummies for him would be free w/my order.) But That is still a pretty costly experiment, you know? If it really did cure all that ails us, that might be fine... but that's a lot to ask from a handful of gummies, isn't it?
I just don't know. I might try it for a month and see if I can tell any change at all... IF ds/ddil want to try it w/dgs. But I don't know. I don't see how ANY product can be that kind of cure-all.

[Ramblinrose]

This may seem sort of weird but for years starting every spring and continuing into the Fall my shoulders would beginning to itch. It was so bad I could hardly keep my hands off of it. And of course the more I scratched the worse it got and I ended up with what looked like tiny bite marks up and down my arms.

Then when I scratched these "bite marks" they would bleed. I had to take benedryl to control intense itching urges. I became so conscience of the nasty scars on my arms that some days I was wearing long sleeves in the summer. My dermatologist suggested I stop using soap and not to shower every day as well as only using warm water. She said I had extremely dry skin and that was my problem. She also told me to use an antibiotic cream on my arms cause my "spots" were becoming infected.

None of this helped. So I started researching abt my "bites" on the web.

Somehow I came across an article addressing excema. And that lead me to articles for home remedies for the same.

This spring my "bites" started to return and I immediately started using the home remedy that I had read about and low and behold the "rash" which covered an area the size of two silver dollars, healed and then disappeared.

This is what the home remedy was...
Take bleach dilute it in water... Ratio: 1:10
Using a cotton pad clean area well.
Let dry
Apply antibiotic cream to area
Let dry
Apply mixture of baby and olive oil (mix half and half)
Repeat three times daily
Begin use again at first sign of excema

Reduce dairy intake to keep excema from reoccurring .

Strang as it seems after fighting this for seven years I am excema free. As soon as I feel an outbreak I start back doing this and now I can wear sleeveless shirts.

Years and years ago I used bleach straight form the bottle when I was suffering from a terrible case of poison ivy. Stung like the blazes cause I had scratched m at areas open, but it helped heal it faster than anything else I had used. Never considered using it on my excema.

[Ramblinrose]

I should add the excema article also said this excema was caused by extreme dry skin, which of course I knew I had, and suggested as a preventative measure to use the oil mixture daily. Olive oil mimics or is closest to our own natural body oil. I use the best oil I can find, and that is more costly because cheaper olive oil is often not first press and not pure... Meaning other types of oil may be infused with it.

I put mine in a pump bottle and use it twice and sometimes three times a day. It doesn't take much and is absorbed into my body before I get into bed. It leaves not stains on my sheets or cloths and I don't slip out of the bed.

I have see great improvement with my skin. I tried using coconut oil to see if that would work but I didn't get the same results.

[Harriet]

lucylee, well, that does sound expensive although it is for two people, so I guess $600 per year? Whole-foods vitamins are certainly the way to go. Why don't you look at ingredient lists of several whole-food multis and compare. As I look at the Juice Plus capsule/pill/gummy ingredients online, I notice there are only fruits and vegetables. To get more ingredients than that you would have to have their meals, of shakes or bars. So I would be interested to know their pills' vitamin/mineral listing, that sort of thing. Most of their competition doesn't stop with only fruit and vegetable ingredients, but include a variety of foods. So I would wonder if the JP vitamin/mineral content is as complete as their competition.

This was a day of struggling as far as foods. Stressful, lots of interaction with people, and even after I thought I was through with social stuff, surprises that sent me away from home even more.

In just a few more minutes it will be time for bed. I need to make 10:00 a firm bedtime.