Health and Fitness, December 2011

[Nancy]

BS low hard to stay on track with that going on this a.m.

Yesterday's exercise was raking & bagging leaves, ex. bike, & total gym.
Today I did more bags of leaves and ex. bike.

Got my Rx refilled of test strips doc.'s office finally got that figured out yea!
Got my food log current.

[Twins' Mom]

Rec'd results of bloodwork today from my check up on Monday - CRP - which doc says is a measure of risk of heart attack with more correlation in women than men stayed constant from last summer, when it already 4.7 in the high range. LDL was 125, close to last summer's result but w elevated CRP he would like to see less than 100. He wrote script for Lipitor so I need to research side effects and risks now.

I also have high blood pressure, which is controlled through meds, but he considers high blood pressure + elevated CPR + less than optimal LDL to be risk factors.

Also Vitamin D low and he wants me to add supplement of 1000 units/daily.

[Harriet]

Sounds like you have a wise trainer there, Lisa. Building strength consistently is so much smarter than just plowing through a list of exercises. If you were to hurt your back, you would be slowed down. Hope you have a good time in the coming week and see even more results.

Nancy, glad you've found the place you like for online logging. I do still go back to mine, too, but more to see how I'm doing against previous records than to record every day.

Cowinkie it was fun to make you look so attractive in PWYC ( ) but you did all the work. Hope you are feeling well.

Twins Mom, you are such a smart cookie - you will figure all this out. I know you are disappointed, both to have no helpful change in numbers to impress your dr's files (smile) and also to have to ponder all this. Good job on planning your own research on the statin drugs. Just 1,000 additional Vit D per day to bring up a deficiency seems somewhat lightweight to me especially since you are now weeks into the "Vitamin D winter" at our mutual latitude. Your level would naturally be headed down right now as far as season. My ob-gyn/hormone dr simply has general guidelines for all patients of 2,000 daily no matter what and is especially insistent with me because I have had a pneumonia. Dee is so happy with her 1,000 IU change (did you read her post in BookSaver's Member's Only thread? that is so great.) but then Dee also keeps the sunshine for a traveling companion!

I am not getting enough sleep, then fretting all day with my ddad's care saving up projects, then in the evening I have no energy to get done all the things I've -saved up until he goes to bed. So I do a bleary-eyed, inefficient job and stay up too late because of that, continuing the cycle. Sigh. Tried to nap after HRH got home but he had to wake me because he needed "backup" in explaining something to ddad. So I'm breaking the cycle. Nighty nite!

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

I'm doing about 1000mg of Vitamin D supplements now. I get some in my multivitamin, 500 mg in a dedicated pill and some in my calcium pill. My diet has at least 500 mg per day in food. I will say I've seemed healthier and more optimistic since adding the 500 mg pill. It was my rheumatologist who told me to get a minimum of 1500 mg of calcium and Vit. D per day.

I'm cautious about raising it too much as a supplement because the research on Vitamin D is new and hasn't been fully tested.

My GP doctor told me to add Vit E to my diet due to my risk of Alzheimers. She said the proof was still out but a survey of neurologists found that the majority took vit E so that was her logic. So I added E supplements twice a day in addition to my multivitamin. Then the studies came out saying that supplements increased the risk of heart problems. Given my dad's heart issues and my own faulty valve, I had to make a choice. I've decided to keep it in but buy the lowest supplement I can find (so many are 500 mg but I'm trying to stick with 200 mg.)

[Lynlee]

pdoc gave me a photocopy of a screed from medical journal on studies indicating probiotics helps with mental health (depression and anxiety), resiliance, stamina etc. Still at the testing stage but looks hopeful.
wondering if we could have told them poor gut health had ramifacations with all our body and mind.
Thinking I'll see if daily sheeps yoghurt helps me. Daily cows yoghurt is too much of that.

Another study someone linked to me was tending to believe drinking a fair quantity of tea (caffine) helped some receptors and made the person more tollerant to a wider variety of food, also stopped leaching of calcium. Person mentioned above was drinking 6 cups of chamomile daily to tolerate more food. I really could do with trialling myself with with more tea of some sort. See if it helps. I tried some green tea with mint but the mintless would be better. yes I bought some. Just need to try it. I won't have 6 cups though. guess daily some sort of tea woould be a start.

Not sure if I wrote here ... taking yeast extract/ natural msg was effecting my bs levels - though I havent reintroduced it to see if it causes problems again. If I was a glutton for punishment and also for knowing pecisely I'd do that. (I've read that food intolerances reduce bs, so there may be a link there if you keep lots of records of food and bs levels)

Congratulations to all those successful with weight loss.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

No weight loss here but no weight gain either so I'm feeling positive.

I'm keeping up quite well with the exercise. I'm not writing down all I eat and I'm seeing my healthy eating habits slip as a result. At least the exercise is keeping things in balance. Plus way too many diet soft drinks.

In a tantrum on Wednesday I bent back my nail on my middle finger left hand and ripped it about 1/3 of the way from the top. It is a small rip, so I put a bandaid on the finger tip for a few days while the nail bed healed a bit (it ached awfully at night and it still hurts to type with that finger.)

Today I trimmed the nail back a bit so the tip won't catch on anything and put the plastic adhesive tab from a bandaid over the rip so that won't catch on anything. I put clear nail polish over that in order to smooth things out a bit (the bandaid has perforations to keep from killing the skin so it is rough.) My bandaids are clear plastic so the nail looks no worse with this on it than it did without but hopefully it will be less likely to catch on things.

[OKay]

No weight loss here but no weight gain either so I'm feeling positive.

Me too!

I can see my goal of losing 4 lbs this month slip away, but I'm okay with that. I am eating all of the food groups now and my weight is staying semi-stable. It has gone up a lb then down a lb several times since the 1st of the month.

I'm going to focus on maintaining this weight during the rest of the month and be happy with that revised goal.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

An update to my nail repair. The bandaid came off in the shower, taking the nail polish with it. I'll just try nail polish for the rest of the day and see if that works or if I have to put a bandaid over my finger tip again.

My hands were so cold while hanging out clothes that I wanted to cry. Even with gloves on the last few items were painful to peg. It is about 8 and windy this morning but sunny too so good drying conditions, although the items are all bent in funny shapes at the moment since they froze in the basket while waiting to be hung.

[albana]

Rec'd results of bloodwork today from my check up on Monday - CRP - which doc says is a measure of risk of heart attack with more correlation in women than men stayed constant from last summer, when it already 4.7 in the high range. LDL was 125, close to last summer's result but w elevated CRP he would like to see less than 100. He wrote script for Lipitor so I need to research side effects and risks now.

I also have high blood pressure, which is controlled through meds, but he considers high blood pressure + elevated CPR + less than optimal LDL to be risk factors.

Also Vitamin D low and he wants me to add supplement of 1000 units/daily.

Lipitor is one of the most commonly prescribed pharmaceuticals out there. If I recall correctly, a generic version of the drug just came out if you wanted to save some money on your prescriptions and medical insurance. Although, I'm not sure how the side effects differ between the original and generic. I also take Vitamin D3 supplements. They make a big difference on my mood, especially during the winter when I'm not absorbing much sunshine.

[Nancy]

Got a good walk in the sunshine yesterday yea!

Today B.S. was up this morning so no breakfast for me.
Walked in form of extra laps inside the groc. store before lunch.
Did a bit more I walked outside in the brisk weather around the loop .5 mi. in the afternoon.
Did the ex. bike in the evening.