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7357. judithathome - 7/17/2008 3:14:49 PM Two year study shows Atkin's diet superior to Low Fat or Mediterranian diet.
I could have told you that...down 30 pounds thus far. I'm not eating huge amounts of fatty meats but lean meats and fish and am getting my carb intake from fruits and veggies. On occasion, I'll have a bowl of oatmeal...the real stuff, not that 2 minute junk.
7358. thoughtful - 7/17/2008 4:37:21 PM Good for you J. It'll be interesting to see what the impact is on your cholesterol readings.
According to the stuff in Taubes book, he said the 2 numbers to watch for are a high HDL and a low triglycerides. The LDL is useless as there are good and bad LDLs and the bloodwork we get doesn't distinguish between them.
7359. thoughtful - 7/17/2008 6:38:04 PM I hate it when I know more than the doctors.
Just talking to an internist and an ob/gyn about the lung cancer/hormone replacement therapy connection. They both said there was none...I just forwarded them an article about how estrogen blockers improve survival rates and other studies suggesting as strong a link between estrogen and lung cancer as there is with estrogen and breast cancer. 7360. arkymalarky - 7/19/2008 1:51:51 AM Estrogen/progestin is the breast cancer connection, but even women who aren't in menopause who get breast cancer have to address their hormones, sometimes with hysterectomies. My SIL hasn't gone there yet, and thankfully her cancer has not returned, but they did try to force her through menopause medically, without surgery. It didn't work.
I've been off and on estrogen since my hysterectomy and am weaning off it permanently now, though I will probably go to a non-systemic cream if I have to. I really was not at all prepared for the effects of a full hysterectomy, and the hrt decision is a much harder one for some women to make because of the effects of menopause. I told a friend whose wife is going through menopause now that everything you put in your mouth has a cost/benefit issue. But I've never done an estrogen pill. I tried one for a few days and had a migraine every day I took it.
I'm coming off a two-day migraine right now, but it's not hormone-related. I just hope the problems I've had in the past without estrogen are better now. I don't like getting personal, but for one thing I'm not ready to go platonic with my husband. Another was the profuse sweating. Being inconveniently hot is one thing--your hair literally dripping sweat in a public place that's air conditioned is another. If jerry curls would come back maybe I could pass it off as that, but otherwise I'm sol. 7361. arkymalarky - 7/19/2008 1:55:06 AM Losing weight, especially after getting my thyroid under control, helped with some of my discomfort, but I was miserable on or off hormones. When I had the thyroid issue I quit sweating completely. Which was the one upside of it. 7362. robertjayb - 7/19/2008 10:24:56 PM Americans stiffed on health care...HouChron editorial
A trio of scathing reports in the last week has trumpeted first, second and third opinions on the miserable value Americans get for what we spend on health care.
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To be blunt, our health care system is a racket. We spend $230 million every hour on it — more per capita than any other country. Yet the rewards for this huge outlay are shabby.
Eleven other countries score better on health indices established by the United Nations Development Program. Especially damning is our infant mortality rate, the measure of life expectancy for children 1 year old and younger.
.................................................
Though Americans spend more than twice as much money on health care as any other industrialized nation, we are among the most likely to die of ailments that could have been successfully treated with prompt or more effective care.
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....the current administration has had nearly eight years to prove its disinterest in making Americans a better deal. But as the presidential election nears, the closely linked findings from the studies should be addressed concretely by each candidate.
7363. thoughtful - 7/21/2008 2:59:56 PM Arky, you have to do what's best for you and your individual situation. But you can't make the best choice without being fully informed. What irritates me is how ill-informed so many docs are so the patients aren't getting the straight story with which to make the right decision...or docs are swaying their patients to their point of view, without taking the individual patient's needs into account.
I've been through this in spades with my thyroid disease.
I find it very frustrating as to why certain aspects of health get all the headlines and other important aspects slip by the wayside. For example, my old secy who ended up with a double mastectomy never knew that the discharge she was having was a sign of cancer. It is an important indicator but is rarely in the literature.
Another example is the number of women who die of heart disease and yet breast cancer seems to get the lion's share of the headlines. Go figure.
And then with thyroid disease, even endos who are supposed to know this stuff, seem to be ill-informed...then they get defensive and act like know-it-alls and refuse to learn anything because it's coming from, god-forbid, the patient!
They all ought to go pound sand! 7364. arkymalarky - 7/21/2008 3:36:49 PM I absolutely agree. It's why I quit my gynecologist after my surgery. He did great with that, but when it came to hormones, he was a wall. I don't want to sound biased, but I went to a woman after that--one who was post-menopause herself--and it made a difference. I now just go to my regular doctor, who's also a (young) woman, but who has dealt with all of that very well. I also liked the fact about my doctor that when I was having chest pains, etc, she went ahead with a stress test, which was abnormal, and proceeded from there to check it out, rather than just assuming that I wasn't old enough to have problems, etc. My main concern about her is that she's getting so popular that she's getting busy, and I worry she won't be as thorough. She has two small kids and it seems like everyone in town wants to go to her--it doesn't hurt that she's very pretty. 7365. arkymalarky - 7/21/2008 3:47:17 PM I told my first gyno that I wanted to try without hormones and he was very much against it. I did have significant menopausal issues, so I tried to work with him on what to take, and he wasn't at all helpful. He started me with a patch right after surgery which burned me like fire. Then he put me on Premarin, which gave me migraines every day I took it, and he didn't seem to take that seriously at all. When I asked him how long I'd have to be on hormones, he said "ten or fifteen years." The woman I went to put me on a lotion, which I LOVE. You just put it on your legs in the mornings. But I don't intend to stay on it, and now that I'm out of graduate school and have gotten through a year of teaching and some significant transitions at work, it's a good time to try to wean off it again and see how I do. I've gone on and off it several times in the last three years, and I've reduced it to half the dosage several times. There's no way I could have done that with my other doctor without an argument every time I went in for a yearly exam. And of course his biggest sin was not informing me of exactly what I'd be looking at after a full hysterectomy. I would have gotten it anyway, but it would have been nice to have been more prepared going in. 7366. thoughtful - 7/21/2008 3:59:17 PM The lotion sounds great as it offers the opportunity to wean yourself off of it with infinitely variable dosage...something you can't do with pills or patches.
I hate it when docs dismiss your symptoms. Migraines are incredible, not something to ignore. I wish there were a way to give the symptom to the doc and say, see? how do you like it? now maybe you'll pay some attention! 7367. thoughtful - 7/29/2008 6:20:50 PM They're coming around, however slowly. Now Prevention mag has picked up on it: Flat Belly Diet
Their approach...include monounsaturated fats in each of 4 meals a day. Of course imo it's the fat offsetting the carbs that's the critical element tho getting a balance of fats in the diet is also a good thing.
Also a nice diet for chocolate lovers! 7368. alistairConnor - 7/29/2008 7:32:24 PM Hmm yes I can relate to all that... nuts, olive oil etc.
Last night I had a steak and steamed green beans, thought I was pretty clever leaving the carbs out, but felt a bit unsatisfied. Not enough fat?
Course, I'm having a beer, which negates my good intentions... My girlfriend lost four kilos recently, mostly, it seems, by giving up alcohol. We would typically share three bottles of wine per week, and perhaps three beers each... very nutricious, unfortunately. 7369. thoughtful - 7/29/2008 11:15:43 PM No need to eliminate carbs, but control them and opt for healthier ones than not...whole grain bread not white...starchy vegetable vs. cookies.
And beer is one of the worst! You can lose weight by cutting the alcohol. But rather than skip the wine, have a wine spritzer...less calories, less alcohol, but dog gone it if the bubbles don't make it hit you faster! 7370. wonkers2 - 7/30/2008 3:34:59 AM Ten things to scratch from your worry list 7371. arkymalarky - 7/31/2008 1:04:28 AM I was disappointed in some of the stuff that wasn't on that list that I evidently have to continue to worry about. ;-)
I did my Ear/Nose/Throat thing yesterday, and it was pretty uninspiring, though he did give me a couple of otc nose sprays for re-moisturizing and blocking irritants and easing some of my more unpleasant symptoms without being addictive. They don't clear your nose, they protect it from irritation. He said no saline spray, which I had thought was a good thing.
The good thing is my allergy test this morning: after four years, even though I quit the treatments during graduate school, my allergies are way down. I was highly allergic to 37 common things when I was first tested. This time it was four. And a lot of things, like dust and cats, I'm no longer allergic to at all. I also talked to my superintendent the other day and he said he was on shots for several years and they helped a lot. I'm thinking by the next time I'm tested three years from now I will be off the program. I hate that I wasn't able to maintain it and I might be off now, but that's just the way it goes. So no nasal surgery, at least not now, but the allergies are getting under control.
If my nasal issues continue to bother me after trying all the recommendations, I'll ask to see a different ENT. This guy was really pretty lame. If he had suggested surgery I'd have had to excuse myself and fun for another clinic. No way I'd let that guy shove sharp implements up my nose. 7372. robertjayb - 7/31/2008 8:50:22 PM An exercise pill...
NEW YORK — (AP) -- Here's a couch potato's dream: What if a drug could help you gain some of the benefits of exercise without working up a sweat?
Scientists reported today that there is such a drug — if you happen to be a mouse.
Sedentary mice that took the drug for four weeks burned more calories and had less fat than untreated mice. And when tested on a treadmill, they could run about 44 percent farther and 23 percent longer than untreated mice.
Just how well those results might translate to people is an open question. But someday, researchers say, such a drug might help treat obesity, diabetes and people with medical conditions that keep them from exercising.
7373. robertjayb - 7/31/2008 8:50:49 PM toys
7374. thoughtful - 8/19/2008 3:44:59 PM Anyone have any advice for tmj?
I woke up about a week ago and started yawning and while I was opening my mouth heard this odd sound from my left tmj. I spent a week not being able to clench my teeth, though I had no pain. I finally forced the jaw back shut, but it's very odd. It hurts to snap the joint back into place and it will stay there so long as I keep my mouth almost completely shut. As soon as I open it, it slips out of joint again, but with absolutely no sound or pain. But putting it back in again is yow! Leaving it out feels fine, but if I keep putting it back it gets painful and stays that way.
Who does one see for this kind of thing? A dentist? A chiropractor? 7375. thoughtful - 8/19/2008 3:50:26 PM Anyone ever watch "you are what you eat" on bbc america? Jillian McKeith is a macrobiotic nutritionist and she invades the homes of people who are obese and gets them to drastically change their diets. I have to admit that after 8 weeks, these people do look incredibly better...not just less weight, but their skin looks better, their energy levels are better, their confidence and happiness is way up there.
One of the things she does is gets them to keep a food diary for a week and then lays out everything they've eaten on a single table. No surprise when you see nothing green or nothing raw and very little that's home cooked.
But one show, the woman ate the most disgusting snack I've ever seen...white bread slathered with margarine and then folded over a bunch of steak fries. Ugh!!! 7376. judithathome - 8/20/2008 6:32:32 AM I watch that show a lot...it's amazing what those people eat in a week! I doubt I eat as much in a month or two and certainly not the same sorts of things.
I'm at a plateau now and have been for a few weeks...32 pounds down. Isn't worrying me at all...I'll eventually drop another pound or two. And then some more...I'm in no hurry.
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