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7045. thoughtful - 4/25/2007 3:26:02 PM BTW, the cholesterol will be higher if you are hypo. Fixing the thyroid will improve your cholesterol readings.
I remember when I had the kidney disease, my cholesterol hit 499!
7046. arkymalarky - 4/26/2007 1:05:43 AM Yeow!
BTW, the cholesterol will be higher if you are hypo. Fixing the thyroid will improve your cholesterol readings
She told me that. I have ready access to all my bloodwork and have the numbers (though I didn't remember them or copy them the first visit), she's taking them again after I hit "normal" and at that point I hope to see the cholesterol down. I've got an appointment May 15 and I'll get a copy then.
It is also very important to make sure the right tests are being run....the TSH, the Free T3 and the Free T4. Many doctors will incorrectly dose patients based on the TSH, but the TSH can lag the readings in the other 2 tests leading to over or under treatment. It's really important to dose based on the free t3 and free t4 as well as by how you feel.
That's what she did, which is why she did the second test before prescribing anything. I remembered they were "t's" and numbers, but didn't remember which ones, but those are the ones. She's very good to explain what's what, and I'll get her to go back through that again with me when I go back. I also emphasized with her all the personal/work stuff I have to go through in the next two to three weeks and how important it is that I not get jerked around, feelings-wise, on this medicine. 7047. wonkers2 - 4/26/2007 1:39:26 PM U.S. doctors are wined and dined by drug sales repsBig Pharma Bribes our Doctors and our Legislators 7048. wonkers2 - 4/26/2007 3:45:24 PM Anybody know anything aboutEDTA? Sounds too good to be true. 7049. thoughtful - 4/26/2007 6:07:26 PM Never heard of it, but just by the way the page is printed up it would seem to be more hype than anything else, at best. At worst, it could be harmful. If I were you, I'd do an internet search to see if any reliable medical journals mention the stuff and judge accordingly. 7050. thoughtful - 4/27/2007 2:24:50 PM This is just getting downright unfair. Why is it all the things that taste so good are so bad for us???
New processing toxins linked with aging diseases
Scientific studies have linked the toxins, called advanced glycation end products (AGEs), with inflammation, insulin resistance, diabetes, vascular and kidney disease, and Alzheimer's....
"AGEs are quite deceptive, since they also give our food desirable tastes and smells," he said. "So, consuming high amounts of grilled, broiled, or fried food means consuming significant amounts of AGEs, and AGEs in excess are toxic."
New methods of cooking to reduce AGE intake, particularly steaming, boiling or making stews, can make a difference, he said. Keeping the heat down and maintaining the water content in food reduces AGE levels.
Can I spend the rest of my days living on soup??? 7051. wonkers2 - 4/29/2007 10:48:10 PM The April 30 New Yorker has a quite good, long article by Atul Gawande entitled "The Way We Age Now." One of his observations is that despite it's usefulness and despite the growing number of old people in this country, the number of geriatric physicians is declining. This is happening apparently because they don't produce as much revenue as do cardiologists, et al. For anybody looking forward to old age the article is well worth reading. I'll try to link it although it would be pretty long to read on line. 7052. wonkers2 - 4/29/2007 10:49:58 PM The Way We Age Now 7053. robertjayb - 5/4/2007 8:54:39 AM Treating the dead... A startling article in Newsweek.
The new science of resuscitation is changing the way doctors think about heart attacks—and death itself.
7054. alistairconnor - 5/4/2007 9:32:37 AM This AGE stuff... it doesn't worry me with respect to processed foods since I eat very little, but fried and barbecued meats, grilled cheese, these are things I eat a fair amount of. Especially living alone, the frying pan is my best friend.
I may have to rethink diet a bit. I was reading an article the other day about Paul McCartney in which his vegetarianism is a big theme, and the journalist notes that he looks at least 10 years younger than his age (65), and that this is true of most of the vegetarians he knows.
It's also true of me (in all modesty). I have been a non-practising (lapsed?) vegetarian these last couple of years. I'm coming round to reconsidering this on health grounds, I'll have to do a bit more reading.
I wonder if having a diet rich in antioxidants counteracts the AGE stuff. 7055. wonkers2 - 5/4/2007 12:29:12 PM That is a startling Newsweek article. Apparently we still have a lot to learn in medicine. (And about diet as well. I wonder whether McCartney's youthful appearance is due to his diet or his genes. I wonder if he smokes or drinks a lot. Those two habits are guaranteed to age one prematurely.) 7056. judithathome - 5/4/2007 3:39:10 PM I'm wondering if he's had "work" done, too. Though people with youthful appearences seem to show the ravages of age less than those who look mature even when young...and he definitley qualifies in that regard. Dick Clark is another one who didn't show his age.
I have a friend who is very youthful looking at 45...people think he's in his late 20s but that's because he has a "baby face" and just doesn't look his age at all.
Most of my vegetarian friends don't look younger, they just look tired and have unhealthy palors...plus their low fat diets make their faces look drawn. They get what I call "parentheticals", etched lines on both sides of the mouth that run from the nose area to the chin area. I can spot a woman who's been eating a low fat diet from a mile away. Plus my veggie friends have dull hair.
And it's not because they don't eat the proper way...this might be true of one or two but the two most avid vegetarians, who eat strictly organic and never drink sodas or eat white sugar or fry anything look sickly and seem to have far less energy than the rest of the group. They do eat fish, however, but not much because of the lack of availablity of really fresh stuff this far inland.
I could probably do a better job as far as my diet is concerned but I eat a variety of things and try to keep my calories within reason...but if I have to live the rest of my life eating the stuff my veggie pals live on just to add a few years, no thanks.
7057. arkymalarky - 5/5/2007 1:28:51 AM A lot of it is genetics, imo. My dad takes great care of himself, but so does my mom, and since I was a teenager people have mistaken him for her son rather than her husband, which needless to say did not go over well with her (ann neither did it with me when for a while people mistook him for my husband, which was creepy). At age 75 people still act amazed at how he looks, though he seems to have really shown more age in the last ten years to me.
My brother always looked like a kid, up until he was around 40. Once we were in a bar, when he was over 30, and the waitress--trying to be all casual when he ordered a drink--said simply, "21?" Without missing a beat, he said "No, just one." She just waved a hand and said, "Oh, you're 21" and got him his drink without insisting on seeing his card. 7058. arkymalarky - 5/5/2007 1:33:04 AM I never have worried much about any of that stuff, first because I was too thin and then because I was too busy; but now that I have a weight problem and time to think about it I want to make some changes, which (what I outlined earlier) aren't that drastic, but are very different from what I was doing. But I mainly want to make the changes because I'm sick of feeling like crap all the time. As it turns out, I'm hoping this thyroid medicine will help. I haven't noticed much difference since the first few days, which I guess were the "placebo effect," but I'll go in for an adjustment on the 14th. The doc told Bob when he went to see her last week that I probably wouldn't notice much difference with the first dosage. 7059. alistairConnor - 5/6/2007 11:54:57 AM Most of my vegetarian friends don't look younger, they just look tired and have unhealthy palors...plus their low fat diets make their faces look drawn.
Well, you're confusing vegetarianism with a dietary fad. Or rather, small sample size will lead to inaccurate conclusions. I certainly have never had a low-fat diet.
Heredity undoubtedly plays an important role in aging. Smoking and drinking too, though I persist in thinking that regular and reasonable quantities of wine is a plus, not a minus (and I can't get my head around the idea that an occasional nip of single malt whisky could possibly be bad for me).
Quite likely, this AGE stuff is more important than actual meat. Certainly, the stuff about the health benefits of cooking things at low temperatures and high moisture content is very well-known and I implicitly recognise the truth of it. I didn't know the scientific justification until now.
So : less fried liver, more steak & kidney pie? I can live with that. 7060. thoughtful - 5/6/2007 10:03:01 PM I wouldn't overdo the AGE stuff only because I've seen so many fads come and go in nutrition. My polish grandmother boiled almost everything and never grilled or blackened anything, but she died in her early 80s like many other women and suffered the last decade+ of her life as an insulin-dependent diabetic...no doubt related to her insistance on "a meal is not a meal without potatoes" lifestyle.
I agree with judithah that vegetarians i know are generally pallid in color and look 'weak'. They don't tend to look strong and muscular but thin and almost sickly. Of course, I need to qualify that by race. The Indians I know...our workplace has lots of them...who are vegetarian seem to do very well. They tend to look healthy and fit. That's one reason I think genetic/ethnic background has a lot to do with it. 7061. thoughtful - 5/6/2007 10:05:09 PM The other factor that we haven't brought up for which there is some new and exciting evidence, but for which there is nothing we can do now, has to do with the importance of good nutrition prenatal and early years of life. They attribute this to the stark differences, eg, in the size and health of people in their 20s during the civil war who suffered many of the diseases that now our common in people in their 80s. There was a NYT article about it several months back...i'll see if i can find it when I get a chance. 7062. judithathome - 5/8/2007 6:15:07 AM Well, you're confusing vegetarianism with a dietary fad.
No, I am not...these people have heen vegetarians for decades and they brought their children (all grown now) up that way, too. It isn't a fad with them.
And yes, I am judging this on a small sample of the several vegetarians I personally know but of that group, many have been doing this for years and some are more of the faddish bent. But they mostly all look unhealthy to me. 7063. wonkers2 - 5/9/2007 1:19:42 PM Johnson & Johnson and Amgen bribing doctors to prescribe their drugs 7064. clydefo - 5/9/2007 2:30:55 PM Apologies to fat folks
...The scientists summarized it in their paper: “The two major findings of this study were that there was a clear relation between the body-mass index of biologic parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that genetic influences are important determinants of body fatness; and that there was no relation between the body-mass index of adoptive parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that childhood family environment alone has little or no effect.”
In other words, being fat was an inherited condition...
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