Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Do your best to rein in your desire. For if you desire something that isn’t within your own control, disappointment will surely follow; meanwhile, you will be neglecting the very things that are within your control that are worthy of desire. -Epictetus, Stoic philosopher, and Sharon Lebell, author(1) All week, people have kept asking me if I'm looking forward to getting my braces off. I haven't been anticipating it at all: when I build something up in my mind, the reality hardly ever matches my expectations. Today was a perfect example of why anticipation is a bad habit. I thought I was going to get my braces off today, but all my orthodontist took off was the wire on the brackets, which his assistant replaced with different wire on some of my teeth. Tomorrow, after the second part of my implant is put in, a different wire is going back on. In a few weeks, I'm going to have to get my braces off for my dentist to take a mold for a crown. I don't know what my dentist...

Have you heard the latest scare tactic against wheat-free eating? A wheat free diet will give you vitamin B deficiencies. Since wheat flour is fortified with B vitamins, substituting wheat-free food will make you sick because wheat-free flour isn't fortified, and bread and cereals are such a major source of B vitamins, says Holly Strawbridge, Executive Editor of Harvard Health Letter . Dietitian Kristi King over at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics agrees . Are they right? Let's look at the evidence. How much vitamin B is in, say, a slice of wheat bread? The yellow row in the table has the answer; the top row is the recommended daily intake of the vitamins. (Click the lower right corner to enlarge) B vitamin table from Lori Miller There's NO vitamin B6 or B12 in the bread, and compared to the recommended daily intake levels, there's only a little bit of the other vitamins.  Fortified cereals have more vitamins, but (as with bread) the B vitamins are ad...

They say everyone has a limit, a point where they sink so low that they can't go on denying they have a problem. I hit bottom last week when (you'd better sit down for this) I was too tired to go salsa dancing two Fridays in a row. My problem is that I always go to bed too late, and have to get up at 6:40 to go to work. Previously, going out on Sunday nights, I could catch up on sleep over the weekend, feel fine Monday morning, and tell myself I could get by on six hours' sleep. But having to cancel plans made me face up to reality. The usual suggestions for getting enough sleep don't work for me. Reading? Part of job is proofreading financial statements and valuation report: if reading those doesn't put you to sleep, nothing will. Going to bed the same time every night? That's fine if you want to party with senior citizens; for the rest of us, things are just getting going and everyone's loose and in the flow at 10:00. Carbs to make me sleepy? That...

What do you get when you put a dentist, an oral surgeon and an orthodontist together? I'm hoping I'll get a final resolution to my dental injuries. Regular readers may recall my bike accident from last summer , when I fell on the pavement and broke my eye tooth, knocked two other teeth out of place and fractured my arm. I got braces a few days later to straighten out my displaced teeth and make room for a dental implant. The first part of my dental implant is in place and healed, and a temporary tooth is attached to my braces; in a few weeks I'll get the second part of the implant in, and a few weeks after that, my dentist will take a mold of my teeth to make a crown. What this also means is that I'll soon be getting rid of my braces. They can't take a mold of my teeth with braces on them, so my dentist plans to attach a temporary tooth to the adjoining teeth right after my next surgery. We can't just leave a gap in there. First, I don't want to go arou...

"Machiavellian: A person who is charming on the surface, a genius at sucking up to power, but capable of mind-boggling acts of deceit for control or personal gain."(1) "Understanding the narcissism epidemic is important because its long-term consequences are destructive to society. American culture's focus on self-admiration has caused a flight from reality to the land of grandiose fantasy."(2) Exasperating to deal with and dangerous when gullible people believe them, narcissists and Machiavellians really have become more common since the beginning of agriculture. There are several reasons--Machiavellians  producing more offspring and passing on their traits; culture; parenting practices; even viruses. I can only imagine life as a hunter-gatherer, but possibly, living such a life among 50 to 150 people, some who'd known you all your life, meant facing reality every day and knowing who you were and what you could do. Nevertheless, the occasional hunter-g...

"If your dog is fat, you're not getting enough exercise." Baloney! It's just one more piece of cute conventional wisdom that doesn't bear out in real life. My dog gets more exercise than I do, and I'm the thin one. She, if anything, eats the healthier diet: home cooked, all paleo, very low carb, no junk or grains. I control her portions, but Molly's an easy gainer. I don't force her to exercise: after I come home from work and pet her, the first thing she does is jump on the treadmill. Sundays, she bugs me until we go for a walk, a swim, or a trip to the dog park. Trucking along on the treadmill last week. Drying her face on the carpet today after a long walk in Confluence Park and (for the first time) swimming across the South Platte River and back.  A +1 to any reader under age 40 who knows where the phrase "lazy brown dog" comes from. Hint: ask Mom, Grandma or anyone else who didn't grow up with a computer.