Pain, Pain, Go Away!

"Poop Van Scoop. We pick up where your dog leaves off. Number one in the number two business." -A long-running ad for backyard sanitation services. Readers, if a post about canine gastrointestinal problems (read: pooping problems) isn't your cup of tea, why don't you read this post about how music made me feel better than the 20 pills a day I was taking at one point in my life. I've always had dogs, but I never had one who would sit and scoot, until Molly. Dogs do this when their anal glands are too full; conventional wisdom says that hard, small stools cause the problem by not pressing on the anal glands enough to empty them. I just knew that every so often, I had to take Molly to the vet to have them drained. Sometimes they even became infected, or "full and stinky" in veterinary terms. For the past few years, I've been fiddling with Molly's diet to help her poop be less like jawbreakers. From what I'd read about digestion, I thought the a

"I'd rather hold a girl in my arms than a football." -Joe DeCicco, friend and dancing fanatic Have you heard that it takes a woman 77 hours of exercise to lose a kilogram of fat? (For us Americans, that's half a pound.) That's according to a study cited by Dr. John Briffa .(1) The women who huffed and puffed three hours a week for a year ended up 4.4 pounds lighter than the sedentary women. That doesn't surprise me: my own weight loss involved a lot less exercise than what I'd been doing. I did no cardio workouts, just strength training . I had more time and energy for dancing, which is a stress reliever, helps keep me in shape, and it's a ton of fun. It's not expensive to dance (as long as you stay away from the studios). I've found excellent lessons at clubs where the teachers really care about the students getting it. Here in Denver, there are dancing clubs that are run by nonprofit organizations, where the prices are reasonable and

"That poor soul." That's what I think when Bonfils Blood Center sends me a letter telling me where my donated blood went. One pint of my blood--one of several from many donors--went to a woman who had a childbirth that would have killed her in times past. Bonfils invited her and all the donors to a party to meet each other. A few dozen donors divided by eight pints per gallon means she lost half or more of her blood. A friend and employee of Bonfils told me about another patient--just a kid--who needed over 100 units of blood. Today, I'm feeling a bit puffed up because I got my six-gallon donor pin. (Not too puffed up, though--my father has donated over 20 gallons and a man named Ned Habich has donated 60.) I went to the bloodmobile parked in front of the Marriott Hotel in downtown Denver this afternoon. I answered a questionnaire and Bonfils tested my iron, pulse and blood pressure. At 118 pounds and with an iron level of 42 ( yay !), I barely met their thresholds f

Do you take vitamins and minerals? I do, and I can see a difference when I take them. When I don't, my skin breaks out and generally doesn't look up to par. I had nosebleeds before taking a big dose of zinc every day, and was mildly anemic before taking iron. But I said to myself, I eat a healthy diet. I don't smoke or drink much alcohol. Why don't I absorb more of the vitamins and minerals I eat? Vitamin and mineral absorption is the problem I'm going to address in this post. There are a lot of everyday foods, drinks, diets and medicines that can make vitamins and minerals pass right through you. I don't want you to give up all your favorite foods and beverages, but consider making some small changes to make the most of your vitamins. Coffee and Tea. I wrote in my last post that coffee and tea interfere with iron absorption. (By "tea," I'm sure that means camellia sinensis , like black tea or green tea or white tea, not apple-cinnamon-vanilla o

A few weeks ago, I had a mystery to solve: I'd been taking iron and zinc pills, and an iron test done when I gave blood showed the highest iron reading I'd ever had. But in late August, my full blood workup showed iron deficiency. My nosebleeds had returned, too. "Your iron level is low," said the letter from my doctor, "and an over the counter vitamin will help. A low iron level needs to be worked up with a colonoscopy or other GI screening." That sounded not only uncomfortable, but expensive. I looked elsewhere for clues. A search on Google Scholar turned up a study * involving coffee. "A cup of coffee reduced iron absorption from a hamburger meal by 39%..." I downloaded the full text . The study was done on humans, it stated what the subjects ate, and didn't sound like the researchers had any agenda. I'd been drinking more coffee--maybe that was my problem. Seeing if it made me feel any different wouldn't cost anything. So every day

I've long thought that eating as our ancient ancestors did has some keys to health. The latest research in paleontology suggests that they didn't have a constant supply of food, they might have gone for short periods (like a day or so) without eating. Having read the benefits of intermittent fasting, I decided to give it a try. Today, I put off eating until 6 p.m., consuming nothing but water. The upsides: My blood sugar was in the 70s during the fast(that's the low end of normal). And I had no nasal congestion. The downsides: I was hungry all day! If one of the points of fasting is to avoid thinking about food, it didn't work. I took a nap in the afternoon and dreamed about food. Then I got up, prepared a feast, and ate for two hours. I had two plates of sausage and vegetables, eggplant with cheese, tossed salad and goat cheese. Then a tablespoon of honey, low-carb hot cocoa, low-carb ice cream, and coffee. After taking a break to talk on the phone, I went to the groce

Some readers know I love the Golden Era (c. 1920-1963): I swing dance, live in a hundred-year-old house, and grow old garden roses. A recent acquaintance even asked me if I drove a Studebaker. I just finished a book that combined my interests in history and health: The Great Starvation Experiment by Todd Tucker. In 1944-45, a group of 36 American men, all conscientious objectors, volunteered for a year-long study on starvation. Ancel Keys (of lipid hypothesis fame) ran the tightly controlled experiment. Dr. Michael Eades blogged about the book awhile back and noted the macronutrient balance of a typical subject: The men in this study consumed macronutrients in the following amounts daily: protein 100 gm, fat 30 gm, and carbohydrate 225 gm. If you express these intakes as percentages, you come up with 25.5% protein, 17.2% fat and 57.3% carbohydrate. Average energy intake of the subjects in the experiment: 1570 calories per day. (emphasis mine) The men also had to walk 22 miles each wee