Finding the Perfect Mate

Last night I was standing in front of the sink washing my single dish and single knife and single fork as I gazed out the window into my backyard and I thought. You know, you have never really gotten to know a man before you “fell in love” with him, in fact you always seem to fall for just any guy who likes you. Maybe, just maybe you never actually loved any of them. You just thought you did. These thoughts started to bubble up soon after I got off the phone with my first x-husband, the father of my daughter. You see he had called to wish me, in his own weird way, a happy mother’s day. We talked for a while and then later I started to have these thoughts. Oh shit, he called because he is the father of my child. It’s odd because I forgot about that. What’s even odder is I realize now that hindsight is 20/20 and he and I have nothing in common, had nothing in common and I can’t imagine why I ever thought I was in love with him. He has been so absent from my life and really just a shadow in my daughter’s life that I never think of him on father’s day. He’s not a bad person, just I don’t know what I saw in him. This realization lead me to understand that I had never truly gotten to know any of the buffoons I “fell in love” with, I just went with it, if they liked me that must be something, right?

My conversation with him came on the tail end of my having watched a show called, “The Secret Lives of Women”, they were highlighting women who love bad men and when I saw that I thought I love bad men I better watch this. Well it turns out the program was about women who fall in love with and then marry prison inmates. How does this happen you may ask? Well many women who study criminal justice are required to visit a prison and are also given information on websites where they can write to inmates and many have fallen in love over the internet with murderers and felons and some have gone on to write books about it. One of the most noteworthy is Tammi Menendez who married Erik Menendez after he had been sentenced and while he was in prison, she wrote a book called, “They Said We’d Never Make It”. Well yeah! Anyway, I watched the episode in a shocked quiet way thinking, how hard up can these women be? I mean its pathetic right? A lot of women are attracted to serial killers, the really nasty ones too and they also will marry. What the fuck is up with that?

But as I stood washing my lone dish and my lone knife and my lone fork I thought that’s it, the perfect mate is an inmate. Yeah, those girls must be onto something because you don’t have to feed them, you don’t have to see them everyday, when ever they see you they are happy, they express their love, they shower you with compliments and all they do all day long is think about you. And let’s face it you never have to worry about that silly little menacing thought that they might kill you, because for the most part you can only see them through a plexi-glass window or in a secure room with 50 guards watching. Some get sex visits, but that is more of a privilege than a right, so it’s all good. You always know where he is and if he cheats on you well it’s his ass! So all things being equal an inmate could be the perfect mate. You may never get to consummate your marriage but at least you’ll have one! Yeah, oh yeah and there are thousands of girls doing it. It must be the new trend. Marry a man who’s locked up, he’ll never divorce you, he’ll never cheat on you, he’ll always love you and you will always know where he is. I suggest you choose one’s who are serving life sentences because that’s your insurance! One woman found out the hard way when her man was released. She liked living a lone but having a husband at the same time and when he got out it was tough for her and he being the criminal that he was got re-arrested and sent right back to jail. They are now living happily as it should be. So those of you who want to be married at all costs! The perfect mate could very well be an inmate!

And this isn’t a woman’s only club, check this out:

Sexy right? And Stylish!

Question: Why should inmates be allowed to marry? Aren’t they in jail to be punished for crimes they committed? Especially death row inmates? Do you think this is fucked up, or is it just me?

Be Careful What You Wish for ~ Some Post-Mother’s Day Humor!

I got this today in my email, too late to post yesterday, but it was cute and well it was cute:

A man was sick and tired of going to work every day while his wife stayed home. He wanted her to see what he went through so he prayed:

Dear Lord:

“I go to work every day and put in 8 hours while my wife merely stays at home. I want her to know what I go through. So, please allow her body to switch with mine for a day”. Amen!’

God, in his infinite wisdom, granted the man’s wish.

The next morning, sure enough, the man awoke as a woman. He arose, cooked breakfast for his mate, Awakened the kids, Set out their school clothes, Fed them breakfast, Packed their lunches, Drove them to school, Came home and picked up the dry cleaning, took it to the cleaners and stopped at the bank to make a deposit, Went grocery shopping, Then drove home to put away the groceries, Paid the bills and balanced the check book. He cleaned the cat’s litter box and bathed the dog. By then, it was already 1:00 P.M.. And then he hurried to make the beds, to do the laundry, vacuum, dust, sweep and mop the kitchen floor. Afterwards and ran to the school to pick up the kids and got into an argument with them on the way home. He set out milk and cookies and got the kids organized to do their homework.

Then, set up the ironing board and watched TV while he did the ironing. At 4:30 he began peeling potatoes and washing vegetables for salad, breaded the pork chops and snapped fresh beans for supper.

After supper, he cleaned the kitchen, Ran the dishwasher, Folded laundry, bathed the kids, and put them to bed. At 9:00 P.M. He was exhausted and, though his daily chores weren’t finished, he went to bed where he was expected to make love, which he managed to get through without complaint.

The next morning, he awoke and immediately knelt by the bed and said:

“Lord, I don’t know what I was thinking. I was so wrong to envy my wife’s being able to stay home all day. Please, oh! Oh! Please, let us trade back!” Amen!

The Lord, in his infinite wisdom, replied:

“My son, I feel you have learned your lesson and I will be happy to change things back to the way they were. You’ll just have to wait nine months, though. You got pregnant last night.”

Serenity Sunday

It’s Mother’s Day and I for one have never been big on Hallmark moments and Days created just so people will spend more money on cards and gifts. I noticed that barely a month in the year goes by that doesn’t include a made up holiday, but it is Serenity Sunday and so I am making an effort to honor my motherhood, which I honor everyday anyway and to honor those of you who are mothers. I have found some quotes and a couple pictures, that are not as corny as the rest of them for todays post! I  hope you enjoy them and smile a little because I already know you love your children well!

Woman in the home has not yet lost her dignity, in spite of Mother’s Day, with its offensive implication that our love needs an annual nudging, like our enthusiasm for the battle of Bunker Hill. ~John Erskine

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh

Now the thing about having a baby - and I can’t be the first person to have noticed this - is that thereafter you have it. ~Jean Kerr

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. ~Spanish Proverb: Quotes About Mother

No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. ~Florida Scott-Maxwell: Inspirational Mother’s Day Quotes

Remember that behind every successful woman…… is a basket of dirty laundry. ~Unknown

A suburban mother’s role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after. ~Peter De Vries

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his. ~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child. ~Sophia Loren, Women and Beauty

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

Sing out loud in the car even, or especially, if it embarrasses your children. ~Marilyn Penland

Ode to a Bad Tooth

So yesterday morning filled with fear and anxiety I went to my favorite oral surgeon to have a lovely rotten tooth removed. I obsess so much that the night before I actually dreamed about the surgery and in the dream I decided I didn’t have to do it. I dreamed that the tooth could be saved, but in the light of day I remembered the tooth was cracked and no amount of tooth-foolery would save it. I am not so sure why I was so attached to it. Maybe it was because I have had it for so many years. Maybe it was because my father’s voice rang in my head saying, “Keep all of your teeth, no matter what!”, but what he didn’t realize was that one of the reasons I had to have the tooth extracted was because I had done what he advised and took care of my teeth and all those years ago before the dental community realized that amalgam fillings expand and contract causing for me cracks in 2 teeth, and cracks cannot be repaired. No way, no how! So getting my teeth filled led to getting my teeth pulled, plain and simple.

So I sat down and relaxed into the valium drip and went to sleep while my masked surgeon went to work on me.

A nervous time was had by me and an empty, coffee free stomach created a really jittery sensation that I couldn’t even breathe into a sense of calm. But like every other oral surgery I have had, it was over in minutes, 20 actually, but for my drug induced mind it took only seconds and I was reminded again how much I love my surgeon!

I had been meaning to bring a camera along to photograph my friend the tooth who has served me well all of these years, but in my state of anxiety that idea slipped away and I will not be able to share that memory. But I stole one, well two, off the internet to show you. You will just have to imagine that mine came out in a couple of different pieces, since the roots were so long! That fella really didn’t want to leave

Anyway, today I am on pain killers, which leave me hazey and kind of mellow. My face is swollen and I have to take some antibiotics, which I hate, but oddly enough that space where the tooth was, stitched up as it is finally feels better, oddly better, like my tooth and I finally did have to part ways. So I am saying good-bye to it and may it be happy in that place where all bad teeth are sent, the bad tooth graveyard!

Destined to be FAT

Most teenage girls will usually earn money by babysitting, I never did. No I had a unique way of earning extra cash. I did it by losing weight. When I was younger my father told me I was fat. He said I was so fat I looked like the broad side of a barn. I remember the scene as if it happened yesterday. I was just coming out of the bathroom, and walking towards the kitchen when he said it. Then he went off on a tirade. Tirades were a common occurrence at my house. Sometimes he would go on for hours, stopping briefly to have my step-mother bring him a cup of coffee, which he would sip, pinky extended like royalty while we all had to wait like pissed off school girls for him to continue. It was his way of getting a point across. One day he held us all, a captive audience, while he went off for 4 hours because someone forgot to fill an ice cube tray. He was a darling man and oh, so passionate. He demonstrated how to fill it and then had each of us practice in front of him, my step-mother included.

On the day he informed me I was fat, (I say informed because up until that point I hadn’t realized it) , he also told me he had a diet and a reimbursement program that would give me incentive to lose. He told me I would earn a dollar a pound for every pound lost. My step mother would supervise my eating plan and I would follow it to the letter. I earned $30.00 dollars that year and I began my lifetime of dieting, or my battle with the bulge. From that time forward no matter how thin I was I always thought I was fat! I think it was because he hammered it into my head so much. And like a self-fulfilling prophecy I did gain and then lose and gain and then lose until my body was so messed up and my eating habits were so crazy that I had no idea what to eat or when to eat it. In fact I often went long periods of time not eating anything at all, just drinking mixtures and potions that were said to aid in weight loss and would clean out your system.

This is a pretty disturbing and fucked up way to live life! When I was thin for brief moments I would be elated and happy and when I was fat I would hunker down and hate myself every single minute of the day. Of course all of this culminated in the slow deterioration of my self-esteem and my health. Then I married a man who was very much like my father, who only valued me when I was thin, but who would sabotage any diet I ever went on by bringing me Ben & Jerry’s or buying delicious treats and leaving them in the kitchen where I could not resist eating them. While I was married I weighed the most I ever have and I dieted more than I ever have. Not only did I diet, but I exercised up to 2 hours a day and still could not lose. The more I tried and failed the more I hated myself and the more I hated myself the more my relationships deteriorated. I became reclusive by embarrassment since I didn’t want anyone to see me and I became very, very unhappy. I felt I was caught in an endless cycle and nothing I did could save me. I felt destined to be fat. Fat and unhappy. Because thin equaled happiness, something I could never achieve.

After my husband moved out, I lost immediately and without trouble 25 pounds. Some would say I lost 200 pounds just by shoving his loser ass out the door and in a lot of ways that was true because he was weighing me down. He was weighing me down with his expectations that I be as thin as his ex-wife. He was weighing me down because he never seemed to see the heart of me. He just saw the exterior. So when he left I felt a weight had been lifted and so had any expectation that I be thin. And still I had/have a belief that I must be thin to be loved and appreciated and I know it’s sad but true. This has in part prevented me from looking for another relationship and it has also taught me that being loved has nothing to do with my weight. Unfortunately for me this revelation comes at a time when my blood test results heed a warning! Lose weight or start taking insulin!

So 2 weeks ago I began a medically supervised program, this is new for me and so far, the way it’s set up I have been feeling better than ever. I have to eat at scheduled times. I have to eat exact weighed out portions and I have to record every minute of it. In one month I will be weighed and blood tested again to see how it’s working. I have been cautioned not to weigh myself everyday and I have been advised that I must lose 80 pounds and achieve a weight I have not seen since I was 27. The first week I could not help but to weigh myself and I had lost 4 lbs and 3 inches off my waist, but that is the last time I will take those measurements. No, instead I will weigh once a month as instructed and take measurements then too. I am hoping this is the last diet I will ever be on. I am hoping this balanced program will become a way of life for me and not just a temporary obsession. I am filled with hope and I am filled with fear that I will fail again. But this time I am doing it for me because I don’t want to inject myself, because I want to be healthy!

I may report here on my progress or I may not, it just depends on how I feel. My bigger goal is to be one of those girls with the before and after pictures, but I won’t be investing a lot in the exterior, at this point it’s an interior issue!

Wish me luck!

Spring Fever in New York

I didn’t write yesterday. I didn’t have anything to say. I recently developed typing dyslexia, it must be a subconscious thing, because I can type like crazy normally, but now whenever I attempt to type, whether it be email or something for work. I screw up the words. They come out all backwards. It’s incredibly frustrating. So yesterday I sat around thinking about what I should write when all I was itching to do was go for a walk. By 5:30 I had my sneakers on. This sent my dog into a spin, literally. See she has this habit of running in a circle right in front of me every time I put on a pair of shoes. For her putting on shoes equals going for a walk, and that is her favorite pleasure. Next on her list of self indulgence is snapping at flies, and she catches them too. For her it must be like snacking. It’s hilarious to watch. Either way in between her adventures in snapping she noticed I was putting on shoes and started circling like a mad hatter. I decided we would take a chance and walk on the rail trail. New York State has turned all of it’s old rail lines into trails for hikers and mountain bikers and there are several trails in my area, an area so boring that your 2 choices for fun are hiking or shopping. Several years ago someone with money decided to develop this area and now you can’t swing a dead horse without hitting a strip mall, cellular phone store or a fancy car lot. And people shop and I mean shop all day! I often wonder where they come from or how they have acquired their wealth, since they aren’t working and they are spending. Spending ~ the new American pastime!

The reason I say I decided to take a chance on the rail trail is because it is as crowded as the Barnes and Noble parking lot and often there are people whizzing by you on bikes or running by you in pairs chattering away and it is not a peaceful experience, especially when you have a dog who thinks every new person going by is a potential threat to your safety. I’ll sum it up by saying she is very skittish! I will let her run off leash if no one is around, but yesterday something told me it was going to be one of those days when she would be leash bound and it was. Not only was she tied to me we both had to endure a cloud of mosquitos that attacked whenever you stopped moving. I will stop moving a lot to snap pictures. The rail trail I choose has a lovely, photo worthy bog so I grabbed my camera and took some photos in between mosquito bites. I thought I might share some with you.

Now that last one, let me magnify it for you!

was decidedly the one that caused a lot of disorderly conduct in the animal kingdom. At first I could not figure out what all the trouble was, because every dog and every dog owner was stopping at the side of the trail to take a good look. But when I came upon it I understood all the fuss! So I had to snap a picture. I actually took 2 shots, but I thought I would save you the pain of looking at both of them. I have a strange habit of photographing dead things. In my collection are several different models of fish, a crab, a snake, a bat, and now this. The only trouble is I cannot identify this animal, and no one was around by the time I discovered it to tell me what it is.

So therein lies my dilemma! If you know please do tell!

Serenity Sunday

I got this in my email the other day and have been saving it to post for Serenity Sunday. I thought it was very cute and I could relate to it! I hope you enjoy it!

Inner Strength

If you can start the day without caffeine

If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains

If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles

If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it

If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time, (this is a tough one)

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment

If you can conquer tension without medical help.

If you can relax without adult beverages

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs

Then you are probably The Family Dog!

Is it Our Duty to be Happy?

Recently I have been very interested in finding the key to happiness. Yeah, Yeah, I know this could be described as a universal quest, but regardless of the fact the my journey to adventure is the same as everyone else’s I have set about investigating it. You see in the beginning I thought, erroneously that the key to happiness would be secured when I found a husband. But my error was in thinking that marriage was a magically delicious zone where happiness was granted. What I found out, after the thrill wore off was that I still was not happy, sometimes not even content. I wasn’t in the “best” marriage, with the “best” guy in the world, but at the time I thought he was, so I am factoring that into my happiness equation, but still. I believe that happiness is something I should bring to the relationship and I know that I did, many times I did, but I also brought a lot of other stuff too. Most of it emotional baggage which I’ve written about before. But now that I am single and relying on myself I have been not really reading about happiness as much as doing what I want to find it in my daily life. I am defining happiness as a simple peacefulness that feels warm all under and it’s a place where I am completely satisfied with my own company. It feels like I have a smile on the inside and I also find myself smiling, just because. This is a nice feeling.

While on my quest without really searching I found a blog/website called “The Happiness Project“, because if I have thought of it there is always someone out there who thought of it first. One of my goals is to have an original idea, but this wasn’t one of them. The founder of the site is writing a book and yesterday she wrote about 8 psychological terms to strength friendships. It was an interesting read and if you want to click over it’s up to you. But one of the things she mentioned was “the duty to be happy”. I am not sure I agree with making happiness a duty because I am all for feeling what you are feeling and then acknowledging it somewhere, because happiness is not something that can be forced. I believe that forcing any emotion can lead to repression of what is real. I am not advocating walking around in a cloud of negativity all day either. I think what I am saying is, that in life, in day-to-day existence there are times when we will not be happy and I think it is our duty to admit it, then we can make light of it, then we can clear the air.

Let’s face it, if happiness was a constant there wouldn’t be so many people searching to find it, in books, in religions, in relationships. Happiness is a part of life, one part. Developing a happy spirit to embrace life is another and accepting what life offers is the key!

Sinful Pleasures Could Be Healthy After All!

There is a study going on right now that is studying the effects of chocolate on 150 post menopausal women with type 2 diabetes who are taking statins to lower their cholesterol levels. I found this out by reading an article at gimundo.com, a website that reports GOOD news everyday, can you imagine? Here’s what it said.

Volunteers Needed to Eat Chocolate

“One new health research project based at Norwich, England’s University of East Anglia should have no problem finding volunteers: All study participants will receive a full year’s worth of free Belgian chocolate.

The study is intended to settle the long-running debate on whether the flavonoids in chocolate really can improve women’s health, as several trials have claimed.

In the study, a group of female volunteers will be divided into two groups. Members of one group will be given a special chocolate bar high in flavonoids, while participants in the other group will be given normal chocolate bars as placebos. The women will be given medical exams six times over the course of the study to measure the amount of plaque in their carotid artery, which correlates to their risk of heart disease.

“We hope to show that adding flavonoids to their diets will provide additional protection from heart disease and give women the opportunity to take more control over reducing their risk of heart disease in the future,” researcher Aeidin Cassidy told The Times.

So where do we sign up? It’s not quite that simple – the study is open only to post-menopausal women with type-2 diabetes who are currently taking statins to lower their cholesterol levels, and we’ve got a feeling the 150 open slots were filled the second researchers leaked their plans.

Don’t worry, though – if the results do prove that chocolate can help prevent heart disease, your doctor might just start prescribing you a daily dose.”

I wouldn’t run out an start buying chocolate bars this minute because if you notice they are studying the effect of flavonoids in hoped up amonts, using special chocolate bars! Maybe they think people who love sugar will be more like to take their medicine if it is delivered in the form of candy, like mommy used to do. I can be a chocolate hound about once a month, but I love the real thing, so I decided to see what a chocolate company had to say about chocolate.

Chocolate Health

“It is believed that chocolate triggers acne and overloaded cholesterol in the bloodstream, while some believe that chocolate is an aphrodisiac and also generates a chemical substance called endorphin which reduces pain and produces a sense of well being. In fact, chocolate contains more than 300 known chemicals and scientists have been working on each chemical and chemical combinations to figure out what are the stimulant effects after consuming chocolate and to prove if the reputation of chocolate are beyond question.

Caffeine, a substance in coffee and tea, is the most famous of chocolate’s chemical ingredient yet it can be found only in small quantities. Theobromine is the primary alkaloid found in cocoa and chocolate and is a weak stimulant contained in slightly higher amounts. Tryptophan, an essential amino acid that is a precursor to serotonin which is a significant neurotransmitter concerning with mood control. Phenethylamine ( a so-called love chemical) is an endogenous alkaloid and monoamine. It is quickly metabolized by the enzyme MAO-B, impeding important concentrations from getting to the brain. Pharmacologist Ryan J. Huxtable described chocolate as “more than food but less than a drug”.

According to a medical research, chocolate strongly delivers pleasure to consumers while melting in one’s mouth as it, bit by bit, lowers the temperature in the human body and generates an increase in brain activity and heart rate. The effect usually lasts for some time after the activity has ended. The research has shown that chocolate input causes a release of serotonin in the brain, which produces feelings of happiness, also indicates that addicts of the drug heroin are more likely to have a greater liking of chocolate possibly because of chocolate triggers dopamine release in human’s brain system of reinforcement.

Likewise, cocoa or dark chocolate carries certain beneficial effects on human health. Dark chocolate, with its high quantities of cocoa, is full with the flavonoids epicatechin and gallic acid, which are believed to hold cardioprotective properties. Cocoa causes an important antioxidant action, shielding against LDL oxidation. Two thirds of total fat in chocolate comes from a type of saturated fat known as stearic acid and mono unsaturated fat known as oleic acid. Stearic acid does not raise the level of LDL cholesterol in our bloodstreams, unlike other saturated fats.

Chocolate is reputed to being an aphrodisiac which is related to simple, sensual pleasure of its consumption. It has been said that serotonin and other chemical substances contained in chocolate especially phenethylamine are mild sexual stimulants. However, there’s no official research claiming that chocolate really serves as a type of aphrodisiac.

Meanwhile, one of the most well-known effects from chocolate is acne, which keeps many women away from being chocolate eaters. The University of Pennsylvania and the US Naval Academy conducted experiments which showed that consumption of chocolate had nothing to do with the developing of acne. Acne is not a result of chocolate itself but milk mixed in the chocolate.

Even if some substances in chocolate are harmless to human, they are toxic to animals such as horses, dogs, cats and parrots. The is hazardous to them as these animals cannot perfectly metabolize chemicals in chocolate, should they be fed chocolate, the theobromine will be in their bloodstream for up to 20 hours and may cause these animals to have epileptic seizures, heart attacks, internal bleeding and finally death.”

NEVER GIVE CHOCOLATE TO YOUR PET!

Red Wine is another sinful pleasure many of us like to indulge and in it is a substance called resveratrol which is supposed to help with the cure of type 2 diabetes, but don’t go out and start chugging red wine just yet, because it has been found that at least for mice they have to drink a thousand glasses a day before it has any diabetes curing effect. What red wine HAS been proven to help with is dementia one of the most common forms is Alzheimers disease:

“The study tracked a group of 1,500 women in Gothenberg, Sweden, for a period of 34 years, measuring their drinking habits over that period of time in relation to their health. According to the results, which were reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, women who regularly drank wine along with other forms of alcohol were 40 percent less likely to develop dementia than non-wine drinkers.

For women who skipped the beer and hard liquor, sticking exclusively with wine, the results were even more promising: Their risk of developing dementia in later life dropped by 70 percent.

Researchers believe that wine’s affect on mental well-being may be associated with the drink’s antioxidant properties, which could have a positive impact on blood vessels, though”the people who drink wine might have other characteristics that we simply can’t measure,”

But moderation is still the key because study participants on average consumed only one glass of red wine per week and not one a day as we are so often told to consume.

What really seems to show promise in all areas is a reduced calorie diet which has been studied in animals and humans alike and has been proven to increase life span and reverse the effects of aging.

Effects of Calorie Restriction (CR) on Humans:

In human subjects, CR has been shown to lower cholesterol, fasting glucose, and blood pressure. Some consider these to be biomarkers of aging, since there is a correlation between these markers and risk of diseases associated with aging. Except for houseflies (below), animal species tested with CR so far, including primates, rats, mice, spiders, Drosophila, C. elegans and rotifers, have shown lifespan extension^{[citation needed]}. CR is the only known dietary measure capable of extending maximum lifespan^{[citation needed]}, as opposed to average lifespan. In CR, energy intake is minimized, but sufficient quantities of vitamins, minerals and other important nutrients must be eaten.^{[citation needed]}

A small-scale study in the US at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis studied the effects following a calorie-restricted diet of 10-25% less calorie intake than the average Western diet. Body mass index (BMI) was significantly lower in the calorie-restricted group when compared with the matched group; 19.6 compared with 25.9. The BMI values for the comparison group are similar to the mean BMI values for middle-aged people in the US. All those on calorie-restricted diets experienced reductions in BMI after starting their diet. Their BMIs decreased from an average of 24 (range of 29.6 to 19.4) to an average of 19.5 (range of 22.8 to 16.5) over the course of their dieting (3-15 years). Nearly all the decrease in BMI occurred in the first year of dieting. It was found that the average total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol levels for calorie-restricted individuals were the equivalent of those found in the lowest 10% of normal people in their age group. It was found that the average HDL (good) cholesterol levels for calorie-restricted individuals were very high—in the 85th to 90th percentile range for normal middle-aged US men. These positive changes in calorie-restricted individuals were found to occur mainly in the first year of dieting. [It] was found that the calorie-restricted group had remarkably low triglyceride levels. In fact, they were as low as the lowest 5% of Americans in their 20s. This is more remarkable when it is noted that the calorie-restricted individuals were actually aged between 35 and 82 years. Both systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels in calorie-restricted group were remarkably low, about 100/60, values normally found in 10-year-old children. Fasting plasma insulin concentration was 65% lower and fasting plasma glucose concentration was also significantly lower in the calorie-restricted group when compared with the comparison group.” The comparison group’s statistics aligned approximately with the US national average on the dimensions considered.

Seems the best way to overall health is moderation in all things!

Obsess Much? A Bad Tooth Story. . .

Can I just say that I hate, hate, hate going to the dentist? I didn’t always hate it, not like I do now, but over the years I have developed a dental phobia, a big nasty one. I think it started the first time I had a wisdom tooth removed and a root canal performed in the same visit. Yeah, I was told later by more than one dentist that it is not a good idea to perform those procedures on the same side of the mouth on the same day. I was hopped up on novocaine and nitrous oxide, a real spine tingling combo. I have learned from that experience that it is best to go to an oral surgeon for major extractions and I wish all of my dental experiences could be so wonderful. You see my oral surgeon puts me to sleep via intravenous valium and I never know what’s happening.

One question I have always wanted to know the answer to is why can’t they put you to sleep for every dental experience? I mean let’s face it going to the dentist always feels like surgery to me. I put off going to the dentist, I think subconsciously so that the tooth will get so bad I have to have it surgically extracted and I can go to sleep for that, it still hurts but I don’t have to deal with the consciousness of what’s going on.

I mean who wants to deal with this guy? That is not a picture of my actual dentist, but they all look the same don’t they, hiding behind that mask? Coming at you with giant picks and drills and painful poking devices there has got to be a better way.

Then after they make their diagnosis via big plastic xray thing shoved into your mouth and a lead jacket they say it’s time to get some work done. Would you like novocaine. Well no I don’t want a 2 foot needle shoved into my gum, but I would prefer it to the excruciating pain I will have to endure without it. See the thing for me is that what goes on in my mind is far worse than what is going on in my mouth and no matter how much novocaine I am given, I can still feel whats happening, this bothers me. One time a dentist of mine had to literally squirt the drug into the opening he had drilled into my tooth because I could not stop feeling it. He must have loved me.

Anyway, all of this comes up today because I have a bad tooth, a really rotten tooth in the way back and it is starting to annoy me and it’s a tooth that has been worked on before. You know what, I’m not sure you could even call it a tooth anymore, it’s just what’s left of it and is filled with amalgam, yeah I know that’s bad and somehow poisoned but like I said the dentist office is a place I really don’t want to visit.

So I reluctantly made and appointment to go have it looked at and to decide my options, because if it’s really bad I am going to have it pulled, good root canals around here cost $3000.00 as opposed to $550.00 to have it extracted, so there’s the money thing to take into consideration, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I obsessed about this so much that this morning I woke up and mentally prepared to go to the dentist at 9am. I was nervous the whole way and thinking about what he would say and on and on and on. I arrived early so I could fill out the forms and I was proud to have even made it to the front door. So was I surprised when I went to open it and it was locked. All the lights were off and there wasn’t a car in the parking lot, WTF? So I waited and waited until 9:10am and then left. Well wouldn’t you know it, my appointment is tomorrow, not today. Holy Hell Batman I have to re-run this whole scene tomorrow!