6790. thoughtful - 4/3/2007 1:20:19 PM I've seen a lot of statistics, none consistent, on what % is determined by genes and what % is determined by lifestyle. My conclusion is that lifestyle accounts for a lot more than many people think.
I look at my brother who is 54 but looks like he's in his 70s vs me who many people presume i'm a decade younger than I am. He smokes, doesn't watch his diet, drinks too much, doesn't exercise, and has ended up with diabetes and has a stent in his carotid artery as he's had a stroke and was losing his vision due to poor circulation to his brain.
I drink very little, never smoked, exercise daily, and try to eat nutritiously. I also have no significant health issues. 6791. alistairConnor - 4/3/2007 3:31:22 PM I intend to die old and leave a good-looking corpse (to science?) 6792. thoughtful - 4/3/2007 4:24:53 PM Funny you should mention that AC.
A long time ago I signed up with an area med school to donate my body to them when I die. Only thing is, I might be rejected. Can you imagine failing to get into med school even as a cadaver???
They won't take you if you are obese or emaciated or have died of something infectious or are mangled or have too many body parts missing....like you were first an organ donor...they much prefer you to be an organ donor if possible for obvious reasons.
I suppose if i get rejected, i can always try to get accepted at the body farm.... 6793. alistairConnor - 4/3/2007 4:51:05 PM Or failing that, at the pig farm. As long as I can be useful.
Perhaps I could get anoxically cremated! Yes, reduced to charcoal, so that my ashes would be sequestering carbon.
Sounds like a promising business venture, actually. 6794. thoughtful - 4/3/2007 6:02:07 PM we can just throw you in the la brea tar pits and you can fossilize 6795. arkymalarky - 4/3/2007 6:37:10 PM My dad's good friend once wrote a nice song, "Send Me to Glory in a Glad Bag."
The last line of the chorus: "Just set me on the curb on Tuesday, and let the sanitation locals take me home." 6796. thoughtful - 4/3/2007 9:09:48 PM I've been teasing mom about at least her being too old to die young. Wouldn't you know it the car talk guys had a song on last week "Just Too Old To Still Die Young." 6797. alistairConnor - 4/4/2007 1:27:20 PM Funny how these subjects pop up...
I just read an article about Keith Richards... guess what he did with his father's ashes?
You guessed right... mixed him with some coke and snorted him...
An odd variation on ritual cannibalism eh? (The old bugger always got up my nose, so...)
I certainly hope my kids don't do that to me. 6798. thoughtful - 4/4/2007 2:12:06 PM That is disgusting. I heard it on the news this a.m. That guy is nuts. Of course I'm always so suspicious of crematoria, I suspect those were probably ashes from someone or something else. I mean do you really think they clean those furnaces after each body? I view the ash thing as more symbolic than anything else.
Remember that joint in GA? Yuck. 6799. betty - 4/4/2007 3:31:16 PM I have a soft spot for cemetaries because they were some of the first municipal parks (see, AC, cemetaries started the green revolution), but the idea of actually rotting away in one makes me ill. Plus I get into the whole Decca Milford politics of the funerary business...so it's cremation for me, thanks. 6800. clydefo - 4/4/2007 4:56:31 PM Please leave my bones to the Kilimanjaro vultures. 6801. thoughtful - 4/4/2007 5:51:21 PM I'm afraid the vultures don't want your bones, but the meat on them... 6802. clydefo - 4/4/2007 6:47:17 PM Bone Crusher
"The Lammergeier or Bearded Vulture, Gypaetus barbatus, is an Old World vulture, the only member of the genus Gypaetus. It breeds on crags in high mountains in southern Europe, Africa, India and Tibet...
Like other vultures it is a scavenger, feeding mostly from carcasses of dead animals. It usually disdains the rotting meat, however, and lives on a diet that is 90% bone. It will drop large bones from a height to crack them to get smaller pieces. Its old name of Ossifrage (or Bone Crusher) relates to this habit. Live tortoises are also dropped in similar fashion to crack them open.
Seen on National Geographic TV:
Old water buffalo climb above the Kilimanjaro freeze-line to escape predators, starve, and are picked clean by small critters. Bone Crusher finds the skeleton during it's thirty mile cruise around the heights of the cone, lands and eats the bones. There was a shot of one of them tilting his head back some funny way and swallowing an intact buffalo leg bone. Looked like a good way to go. 6803. arkymalarky - 4/4/2007 8:23:38 PM I'll bet it's a lot less gross when they puke on your car.
In an article about an archaeological dig of a neolithic city in Turkey, evidence showed that the people left the dead to the buzzards and then brought the bones into the home rather than burying them in a common graveyard. I like that idea, actually.
I must confess to being fairly morbid, and when I had my hysterectomy I made Bob take me to a cemetery between where I live and work--called, appropriately, "Halfway." I thought I'd love it, but I hated it. It's where his great-great-grandmother, a half-Caddo Indain woman whose first name was Caddo, is buried. It seems to work for her, but I didn't like it. I would rather be buried as close to here as possible. I don't want to be cremated and I want Bob next to me. But I don't want to be on a highway, either, which is where most of his family on his mother's side is buried. We have two cemeteries here, but one is a family plot. I think they'd let us in, but it's on a highway too. I would also like a stele instead of a tombstone. I figure it's like everything else. People will agree with me and then do what they want when I'm not around to gripe about it. 6804. thoughtful - 4/4/2007 8:38:32 PM It depends on the people. Dad wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread in the gulf stream. I did just that with the help of the US Navy which buries veterans at sea.
My SIL wanted the same thing, but my brother hasnt parted with her yet. Ive offered to take care of it for him when he is ready. 6805. thoughtful - 4/4/2007 8:39:59 PM Years ago mother said she wanted to be buried under a tree on a hill with a nice view....i suggested she'd be getting 0 view from 6' under. She's into body donation now, if they'll have her. Hubby wants to be cremated and i imagine i'll bury him in the family plot with his parents. 6806. thoughtful - 4/4/2007 8:41:45 PM never heard about them vultures...very interesting. I guess they will want your bones, clydefo.
that only leaves the question of who gets the meat? 6807. arkymalarky - 4/4/2007 8:46:52 PM I need some input here.
I have gained weight off and on since I was 30 and in that time I have lost down to around 132 or so, but my best weight was 123. Since "Huckabee spoke," as I always put it, and I began working frantically on rural education issues, I have gone up. So have all--not most, but ALL--the women I've worked with, statewide, black or white, regardless of age, on this issue. One (black, middle-aged) is now battling breast cancer, as well. The men seem the same weight-wise, though their stress has been extreme too.
When we won some major battles, organized sufficiently, my personal district was secure for the moment, and I was within three years of being able to retire in the event something happened where I work, I started the fast track to an MSE, which was important to increasing my career choices if my school shut down. That weas last spring, after having had a hysterectomy the year before. I had gone down some from the surgery, but last spring to this fall I have been extremely busy and stressed and the pre-surgery weight is back.
I was thinking of doing a VERY informal blog/daily journal/shared discussion in this thread along with anyone else who's working on weight and/or health issues, the reason being I'm hoping it will help with planning, starting, and sticking with a diet/exercise program and reaching a target (below 130 lbs). I'm starting today (was going to start Saturday after my visit with Judith and Keoni, but this is Plan B), and I'm going to the doctor Friday. I'm planning to start slowly, with calesthenics (why I was asking about them) and a nice treadmill Bob brought back from New Orleans (courtesy of his friend who was anxious to get it out of her house--outdoor walking isn't a good option with my allergies), along with a simple diet that is hopefully healthy but without any potential for gastric surprises, to which I am prone. In the summer I don't care, but now isn't a good time to be implementing a really high-fiber diet or one that might cause my stomach to react.
What I thought about doing was posting my diet/exercise--very beginner stuff--here, whether and to what degree I follow it on any given day, and how I change it. It's like telling everyone you quit smoking, then hoping they'll all drop the subject when you pull that little red plastic tab on a pack of Winstons. If I quit posting, you'll know I quit my program.
What do y'all think about me doing that? Would it bug anyone for me to use this thread in that way? 6808. arkymalarky - 4/4/2007 8:51:51 PM A friend of ours who died suddenly about ten years ago had her insides donated to science, and they buried what was left. It was a good donation, because she had a sudden massive heart attack at 45. She had been on high blood pressure medication, but her father had died of the same thing. He was quite a bit older, though not yet 70, if I recall. 6809. thoughtful - 4/4/2007 8:55:00 PM Fine by me...would you be open to helpful suggestions...with the caveat that you can tell me to shut up if I become too helpful?
(I'm a lifetime member of weight watchers and have been involved with diet and nutrition and exercise since my teens.)
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