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Confirmation
A few months ago, I figured out that I’m allergic to nightshades. Nightshades, of course, being my very favorite foods. (Tomatoes, Eggplant, Potatoes, Peppers, etc.)
So just because I’m like this, lately I’ve been letting myself slip a little on the restrictions. A few french fries from my husband’s plate Saturday, a few bites of chunky tomato salsa yesterday, and many dips into a delicious tomato soup last night. This morning? I am old and creaky again, joints aching like I just ran a marathon, in the desert, while wearing a fifty pound backpack. This morning’s run was miserable, I can barely breathe, and now merely sitting at my desk my hip joints are all whiny about what I did to them. It’s hard for an Italian chef to say goodbye to nightshades, but buona fortuna and ciao!
Now I get to see precisely how long this inflammation takes to go away.
And if you were looking for something cheerful on this Monday morning, just look at this instead. (I want to be like Naomi.)
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Still Alive
God, that really was a melancholy winter. Shut up, former me. The only reason I’m typing yet more words on this subject is that it seems irresponsible to leave a cliffhanger on my own blog. I am fine. Or, at least I am not “fine” but also definitely not liver cancerous at this time. Which means I am super grateful for whatever it is I am. Unless that is another type of cancerous. Is reading this giving you cancer now? Sorry.
As lucky as I am, I can’t help but feel a little guilty about that luck, so I’m remembering some other words of David Rakoff. Roughly, what makes me so special that I shouldn’t have x or y or z thing wrong with me, when I’m lucky enough to have so many other things right in my life? Nothing.
It’s just incredible that last week I was staring down a hereditary diagnosis coming 51 years too early, and today I’m just me with joint pains.
Uncomfortable as it is, the universe doles out misery unevenly, making it seem as if it’s wreaking havoc in a cruel manner, when all it is, is random. A tricky pill to swallow for a life-long hypochondriac, because I tend to feel that I’m owed some kind of disaster diagnosis as payback for all the times I’ve wondered if that sharp pain in my abdomen means I need my appendix out.
Anyway, I’m going to go take my “probably autoimmune” ass over to the couch to enjoy my Christmas tree and pretend none of this ever happened, while I procrastinate calling the next doctor I’m supposed to see, and we’ll never speak of this again.
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Health v. Health Care
“There was nothing natural or inevitable about the way our system developed: employer-based, comprehensive insurance crowded out alternative methods of paying for health-care expenses only because of a poorly considered tax benefit passed half a century ago.”
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Quiet, please.
Those of us who dwell in the big, bad city already know this, but
Noise brings out the worst in human beings—noisy people have been injured and even killed by their neighbours—but neighbours are just one source of noise in a world that’s increasingly cacophonous.
Actually, I can think of at least three other things that bring out the worst in humans here before they even pay attention to the noise.
1) The cattle-corral on the subway, 2) the 90 degree soup we walk through everywhere we go, and 3) the traffic on the sidewalks. (Even LA freeways are less stressful than NY sidewalk traffic.)
As for noise, my neighbors have nothing to worry about, but maybe the construction site downstairs should look out for me.
Noise isn’t just a nuisance; it’s positively bad for us. We’ve known for decades that super-loud noise can deafen us. But damaged hearing is just the beginning. A jet flying overhead or a snoring bedmate can increase blood pressure and heart rate even when we don’t stir from our slumber. Stress hormones surge into the bloodstream. Doctors worry that this chain of events creates health problems when it happens all night long, every night of the week.
Forget murdering others, apparently noise is murdering you. But what about conditioning? I’ve been subjected to similar noise levels most of my life. Am I immune? Probably not, perhaps just comfortable in my discomfort.
Researchers [...] conducted blood pressure measurements at 15-minute intervals, or about 30 measurements each night, in 140 people sleeping near major airports. Noise levels were measured at the same time. Even when the overhead airplane noise didn’t wake the study participants, systolic blood pressure (the top number on a blood pressure reading) increased by 6.2 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) by 7.4 mm Hg. Heart rate went up by an average of 5.4 beats per minute.
The study is ultimately unclear about long-term results (i.e., will a healthy person’s blood pressure permanently increase as a result of consistent exposure to noise and stress?) Not sure.
Still, as I write this, I’m becoming more aware of the booming and screeching outside, and with my neck increasingly tense, I have to capitulate. I have donned earplugs (which don’t even block all the noise).