Need solutions for the medication, medical appliances and/or medical travel that you can't afford? READ EMPOWER Yourself.
A Health Information Management professional, I survived a life-threatening emergency with information that only a person of my professional experience would know. And I’m sharing it!
The 44C/107F-plus weather in Israel has been brutally hot and physically plus mentally draining this week.
I was simply too tired with the rest of life and the high heat to post messages on this blog. But I had a moving experience yesterday that I want to share with you. I often volunteer my time, insights and efforts to help people or organizations in need of them. I tend to interact with people and situations involved in medical and/or emotional and mental health stress. One of the people I'd recently helped took me out for a cup of coffee in an outdoor cafe as the excessively high heat cooled down for the Middle East night. We spoke of the person's life history (I had not previously known it), attitude toward the future, and assessment of a highly problematic past. The conversation became charged with spiritual implications and realizations. I do Self-Help Coaching with clients who are uncertain of how to proceed with their futures because of their medical conditions. I help them to clarify their challenges, identify their goals and to create an agenda for achieving those goals. Then they're on their own, to make necessary efforts. The person before me had done this without my input. I found the courage, clear headedness and humility captivating (please notice that I'm intentionally avoiding pronouns such as "him" or "her" so I can protect the person's privacy). With further discussion, we agreed that such a mindset is due to one specific focus:
You're not searching for your life's meaning.
You're creating it.
So many people trek around the world, ingest (usually illegal and unsafe) substances or indulge in unproductive self-analysis as they seek emotional comfort. They remain stuck, not necessarily knowing why that's so. People who are "looking for themselves" tend be trying to escape their thinking processes and emotional tendencies, not in finding their true self and then making progress.
The solution to the problem is attitudinal.
Choose to make progress instead of swirling in the aftermath of unpleasant circumstances. Make incremental changes, one at a time. The person before me at the cafe had done so despite horrific betrayals and medical manipulation. I was awed at the result: A face glowing with self respect, a person making sensible choices, and a life going forward despite the bumps that tend to whack us mortals when we least expect them.
I then explained that
shows readers how to do much of that
with the cooperation of loved ones,
their medical professionals,
or all on their own. The book holds fill-in-the-blank lines that you and/or they can fill in together or individually.
I came away from the conversation happier for realizing that I'd made a choice to empower my readers. It's no simple matter to carry on with heartache, debts and illness that seem to impede many simple choices. Over time, some of those readers have contacted me to express their gratitude for the content. I pray that the book will help you to create some of your life's meaning. I salute you for your determination and your focus on a better tomorrow. Here's an insightful look at what you're accomplishing.
Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your soul with spirituality, positive growth beyond your present limitations.
B'SD 7 Sivan, 5775 The Shavuot holiday ended in Israel, last night. One of the memorable parts of the holiday for me was when I focused on the meaning of the prayers with closed eyes, undistracted by anything around me. They state our reason for being: to light the world with kindness.
One of my goals when compiling information for the Global Resources Section of
was to supply desperately needed information about how to secure necessary medical care, medical appliances, medical travel assistance and medical insurance. People in agony have little to no time for doing the necessary research. They're already struggling to remain alive and in less pain than they're suffering physically, emotionally and financially. I did my best to give ailing, incapacitated people a necessary boost forward. Some of those ailing, incapacitated people are military veterans, whose governments and associated societies have failed to serve their needs. I've met such individuals. I can't begin to describe the reaction in my own guts, to know that someone who risked their all can be abandoned, or so simply.
I listened to this video today (click the link so you can, too), Memorial Day, which many people, aka picnickers, tend to forget is actually a form of Veteran's Day.
Soldier Writes Beautiful Song To Honor His Fallen Brothers And Sisters
HTTP://FAL.CN/C1G
Please buy the song from iTunes as directed on the website, to empower combat-wounded US veterans.
The US marks Veteran's Day in November, But there's no time to wait. I hope that you'll also buy a few copies of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge and give them to veterans (in any country!) you know, or can seek out. For a wounded, suffering vet, and for anyone benefited by his or her sacrifices, every day is Veteran's Day. Share the wealth. Promote improved health in ways you cannot imagine. Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge for yourself or someone you know. Present it as a gift to someone who needs it, even someone you've never met. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Find ways to ease someone's pain.
I'm mentally and emotionally preparing for the holiday of Shavuot, and thought of an interesting slice of life story to share with you. It happened the day before yesterday in the late afternoon/early evening. I was rushing to meet a friend giving me a ride to a distant city so I could run necessary errands there in a short span of time. Somehow I had not thought of taking my street map with me, and lost my way. Eventually I received a message on my cellphone. It indicated that the gentleman doing the driving would be leaving earlier than we'd planned. I needed to arrive to his office faster than I'd thought. I began to feel frustrated with myself, frantic at the thought of missing the ride (it would have led to several disappointed and inconvenienced people depending on me to arrive in a timely manner) and quite foolish. A friend tried to guide me via cellphone to the meeting point I sought, and managed to misdirect me into the opposite direction that I needed. We shared an uncomfortable silence as we realized that. I was unhappy in the 104-degree heat, tired of carrying a heavy bag, and desperate for a quick solution. My friend begged forgiveness for having misguided a very pressed-for-time me and then berated herself. I interrupted her self-flagellation by saying "Stop. I know what's going on I've been through this sort of situation before. Several things are going kerflooey in rapid succession, I have few to zero options and I need to stop what I'm doing to realize that GOD is controlling the situation. I'm not supposed to freak out. "I need to keep things in perspective. GOD is running the show. If I can manage to keep my mood in control, He'll pull some nifty trick out of His heavenly sleeves. Who knows? Maybe I'll win the lottery," I laughed. "I'm going to trust my instincts and head in the direction I believe I need. You did your best and I appreciate that." We ended our cellphone call, I walked a bit, then I hailed a taxi in the hope that I'd quickly meet the guy giving me a ride before he headed out of town. And I wondered "Which blessing is heading my way?" I entered the taxi and calmly told the driver where I needed to be and in a BIG hurry. He turned around and asked "Are you kidding? It's down the street."
We drove to the juncture I needed within a minute, as I realized that an essential street sign had been missing from its designated spot. No wonder I'd felt lost and confused. But as things turned out, I had been right where I needed to be. I laugh to think back to yesterday's mad dash to the meet-up, that I'd used a life lesson well instead of condemning myself or my friend, and realized that "I'm where I need to be, I just didn't know it." Life's full of such situations. They can help us to grow, or to appreciate the growth we've made. Growing past your limits is a spiritual activity. I'm sure that you have "I'm where I need to be, I just didn't know it," life lessons to heed, too. Enjoy the moments when you get things right. They're wonderful. If you wish, let me know the blessings that come your way. Happy Shavuot (it begins Saturday night). I call it the international bar and bat mitzva party of the Jewish People.
Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your life with self-confidence, one step at a time.
B'SD 2 Sivan, 5775 Some of you want to improve your meals with organic food but cannot handle the often high price of such foods. Here's an article to help you lower your organic food bills. Click on:
Trader Joe's, Aldi, Walmart, Costco and even Whole Foods offer great deals on certain organic items. The trick to saving money is buying the right product at the right store...
Need non-allergenic clothing and/or household items? See http://janices.com/
Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your needs affordably (the EMPOWER Yourself book is packed with such information!)
I
offer the following modest suggestions for anyone wishing to control their
weight:
1)
Remember that it may be unhealthier to lose weight than to gain weight. Sure,
you get more compliments from your friends when you lose weight. But looks
aside, fat is dangerous when it is in your bloodstream, not when it is in folds
on your stomach. Fat in your blood can leave deposits on the walls of your
blood vessels. It can also feed cancer cells, which generally need more energy
than healthy cells - and, for that matter, fat can feed any disease cell that is
rapidly growing.
Diabetics
are liable to all sorts of health problems precisely because, in the absence of
insulin which is necessary for metabolizing sugar, they metabolize too much fat
instead. Excessive fat metabolism is very bad for the body. It raises the
acidity level of the body and this in turn depresses the nervous system.
Losing
several pounds of fat within a short time is at least as bad as eating that
much fat because if you lost it, you metabolized it. This is downright
unhealthy, for reasons too complicated to be addressed in this essay. If you
must lose weight, lose it very gradually.
2)
Remember that you want to correct an imbalance of less than one per cent. Think
1 percent, not 30 percent. Avoid like the plague diet doctors who prescribe
diets that give you well below what your body needs. Apart from being hungry,
you could end up malnourished. For the first few months, you might feel
psychologically buoyed by the weight loss. This can positively reinforce your
will to stick to the diet, but during these few months you would be living off
stored nutritional savings, depleting necessary supplies for your future
health. We addressed the problem in Part I.
Eventually
this deficit creates an urgent biological need for more than you’re getting
from your diet, making it harder and harder to stick to the diet. Most people
eventually crack by overeating and regaining most of the weight they lost. That’s the Boomerang Effect.
I
suspect that one of the reasons many dieters want to lose weight quickly is
that dieting is so unpleasant that they are anxious to terminate it, and that, consciously
or unconsciously, they plan to do exactly that as soon as they lose enough
weight to be satisfied by their new appearance. Another reason for quick weigh loss
is that dieters want to impress someone, and fast. They develop enthusiasm for
weight loss because of some event such as a wedding, graduation or other
celebration is about to happen, or they wait until May to sculpt a June beach
body from excess fat and untoned muscle.
So
if you are overweight, the last thing you want to do is diet. What you need to
do is to start caring for yourself. Even
Dr. Robert Atkins, the "king" of weight loss doctors, emphasized the
importance of long term healthy living. Although famous for preaching an
extremely low carbohydrate intake [1] he emphasizes that this is only for the short
term. He makes it quite clear that over the long term, vegetables and whole
grains are necessities.
3)
Don't get up from a meal hungry. If you finished the food on your plate and you
are still hungry, then don't get up. You have the options of eating more, or
just sitting there and not doing much of anything except letting your food
digest. Just sitting there can be surprisingly filling. The reason for this is
that it takes longer for your food to digest than it does to chew and swallow
it. It can take a while until your blood sugar starts to rise, and it is this
rise in blood sugar that relieves hunger (think of the ghrelin and leptin
mentioned above). It could be that you have eaten enough, but don't yet feel
it. If you just sit at rest in your chair at the dining room table for five or
ten minutes after a meal, you might feel just as satisfied as you would had you
spent the same time eating. And remember, you don't need any excuse to just sit
there for a few more minutes. No need to light up a cigarette or anything like
that.
4)
Store glycogen, not fat. Glycogen is a wonderful substance that stores energy
in your body. It typically lasts for about 24 hours before getting used up.
When you consume food, and your blood glucose level begins to rise, your liver
begins to convert the glucose - which can be burned in an instant by cells - to
glycogen, which lasts longer. Glucose is analogous to paper thrown into a fire.
It can cause the fire to flare up, but it cannot last long, no matter how much
you throw in. Glycogen is more like logs in a fireplace, which burn more slowly
and steadily, keeping your living room at a steady, adequate temperature for a
reasonably prolonged duration. If it were not for the ability to convert sugar
to glycogen, you would wake up every morning (or not) faint from hunger, no
matter how much you’d eaten for dinner the night before. The reason is because
the blood sugar would not last the night without being resupplied.
Store more glycogen and less fat by eating
carbohydrates in the form of whole kernels of grain, not sugar or flour
products.
Carbohydrates come in two varieties: Simple, i.e. sugars, and Complex which are
long chains of sugar molecules fastened together (polysaccharides, e.g. starch). Because they are linked together, they cannot bind to the sugar
receptors in your taste buds, except maybe for their end points, where the
sugar is exposed. The more the starch is snipped into shorter chains, the more
endpoints it develops, and the sweeter it gets.
Energy
from Polysaccharides: Each individual sugar link in the
polysaccharide chain has to be unfastened and converted to glucose, the
simplest of all sugars, before it can be used by the body as energy.Complex carbohydrates, by the way, last longer
because the body has to unfasten the individual sugar links in the
polysaccharide. This relatively slow, tedious process of unfastening sugar
molecules from polysaccharides, one by one, is far healthier than eating sugar
because it provides the body with a slower, steadier source of energy thereby
keeping energy supply more in harmony with demand, which is also pretty steady.
Thus, starch keeps you satisfied longer than sugar, but even starch does not
necessarily last five or six hours, which is the typical time interval between
lunch and dinner.
For
this reason, the distinction between whole grains and whole flour is
important. So-called whole wheat flour
may include every part of the wheat kernel ground up, but it is not whole, and
it is burned by the body almost as fast as white flour. It has been ground up, so it dissolves in
your mouth and stomach much faster than a kernel that has to be chewed up.
Whole grains, cooked in water, chewed slowly and thoroughly, and ingested
slowly will keep you satisfied between meals longer than bread or pasta.
Overall, you will have less of a caloric need during the day. And, importantly,
you will have less of a craving for fat-rich foods, which people instinctively
sense are the most filling and long lasting.
Surges
in blood sugar -well above the level needed to function without feeling hungry
- promote insulin production. Insulin is what helps sugar to enter fat cells
and to be converted into fat. Too much sugar at once can promote excessive
insulin production and thus too much sugar consumption by the cells. The ironic
consequence of having too much blood sugar at a given time is that, several
hours later, you will have less bloodsugarthan if the
original level had been more moderate. Sleepiness then hunger, aka sugar
high/sugar shutdown, is what non-diabetics would experience.Diabetics would probably experience fatigue,
light-headedness or fainting, known as Diabetic Shock. Too much sugar in a
short amount of time is not good for anyone.
Let’s
look at the various forms of energy-bearing substances. Without going into the
biochemistry, let’s consider a rough analogy: Glucose is like
cash, fat is a long term savings account, and glycogen
is a checking account. Cellular diseases - in which a disease cell preys off
blood sugar - are like muggers most likely to pounce on people who have just
cashed their pay check. Eating is like getting paid, and you can get paid in
cash (sugar, simple carbohydrates), or by direct deposit into a checking
account (glycogen) or savings account (fat). While the details might be
complicated, and even vary from one individual to the next, a general rule of
thumb is that the form of calories most likely to be stored as fat is fat.
Sugar can be stored as fat, but the body extracts a stiff deposit fee for
making this conversion - about 30 percent of the total. Assuming evolution has
optimized survival strategy, this 30 percent penalty makes sense only if there is an excess of
sugar, such as you would get if you ate something rich in simple, fast-burning
carbohydrates.
By
taking your calories in the manner that metabolizes slowly, your blood sugar
will undergo less post-prandial spiking (the surges that follow a meal).
According to the reasoning above, this is less likely to lead to fat storage
and more likely to lead to desirable glycogen storage.
Another
rule of thumb for encouraging glycogen storage is to avoid stressful things
that cause the opposite effect. Stress provokes the body into creating
adrenalin, a chemical which makes you feel burdened or rushed while your
post-prandial (time after a meal) blood sugar is elevated by food that is
digesting. That sort of stress causes glycogen to be converted back into sugar
so that it can be used for the flight or fight reflex when you sense danger. It
is the opposite of what you want when trying to store enough glycogen after one
meal to get you to the next. Think of the situation this way: The fight or flight
response is like people about to flee a war zone selling their possessions for
cash, or a country at war undergoing inflation because it prints more money to
cover the costs of the war. The inflation is merely a formal way of saying that
people's savings, their personal spending power, is effectively reduced by the
inflation and covering the cost of the war. Just as a government cashes in on
the savings of the citizenry to pay for the war, the liver cashes in on
glycogen, sending it to the muscles and limbs and converting it to glucose to
pay for the energy cost of a fight or flight response.
One
reason that stress can encourage disease may simply be that it raises blood
sugar. This conventional wisdom seems so logical that biochemical details
almost seem superfluous.
5)
Eat lots of vegetables, especially leafy greens, with each meal, including
breakfast. Vegetables tend to receive insufficient praise in a fast-paced
society because they are bulky and have relatively few calories per unit bulk
when compared to the stuff that fills the shelves of supermarkets and grocery
stores.
You
can avoid time-consuming problems by preparing sliced raw or pre-cooked
vegetables at your leisure so that they’ll be ready to eat as soon as you want
them, instead of scarfing down feel-good-fast junk food that will punish you
later.
Low
calorie food is not very popular in a fast-paced society because it represents
an investment of time with no obvious immediate payback. You know instinctively
that leafy greens have few calories to speak of. When you are starving, leafy
greens are not what you want to sink your teeth into.
Many
people believe that they don't like vegetables because they dislike frozen and
canned vegetables. This is like concluding you don't like steak after having
tasted Spam, or concluding that you don't like fish after eating canned salmon.
Consider the fact that vegetables offer the greatest variety of taste of any
food group. Every type of vegetable has its own distinctive taste, and there
are more varieties of vegetables than meats or fruits. There are at least
several different types of vegetables for most letters of the alphabet e.g.
acorn squash, arugula, asparagus, artichokes, bean sprouts of many different
kinds, beets, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, burdock, butternut squash, cabbage,
carrots, cauliflower, celery, chard, chicory, chives, collard greens, corn,
cress, cucumber, all the way to zucchini.
The
dozens of different types of common vegetables each have their own taste. Most
vegetables can be cooked several different ways. When a person orders meat or
fish in a restaurant it is perfectly acceptable to request a specific degree of
cooking, and the range is from rare, medium rare, medium and all the way to
well done. If, on the other hand, you were to tell a waiter how long you wanted
the chef to cook the vegetables, he would probably give you an annoyed look.
But the taste of a vegetable evolves a great deal as it cooks. An onion that
has been cooking for a long time is sweet food. If it has been cooking only
over short time, it is quite the reverse.
Vegetables
can provide most of the fun in one's diet. As part of a substantial meal,
vegetables help you attain a feeling of satisfaction with fewer calories
consumed. This is partly because they take up room in your stomach and you feel
fuller. But the biochemistry here is indeed interesting: vegetables, especially
leafy greens, are rich in potassium and magnesium, which are mineral elements
that relax the body. They encourage blood vessels to dilate (unlike the sodium
in normal table salt, which causes blood vessels to contract) and have a
similar relaxing effect to a hot bath, which is also relaxing because it
dilates blood vessels. Dilated blood vessels lower blood pressure and that
creates a relaxed sensation. Less blood is squeezed out to the peripheral
limbs, and more goes to the intestinal area, so that nutrients can be absorbed
into the blood.
Another
advantage of vegetables is that they have a lot of fiber. Fiber remains
undigested in the intestines, providing a lot of surface area for sugar to
stick to and be trapped in. Fiber is like a jungle of thick vegetation. Sugar
molecules and the like, even when dissolved, can thus take longer to make their
way through the intestinal walls and into the bloodstream. You’ll remain more
alert and energetic that way, and be able to go longer after your last meal
without eating.
5)
Focus on the food in your mouth, not the food on your plate, and definitely not
the food in the serving dish or the pot. The food on your plate is not doing
you any good yet.
One
of the main differences between a wine connoisseur and a wino is that that the
connoisseur likes both himself and the wine, whereas the wino likes neither and
is merely using each to help eliminate the other. The connoisseur savors the
wine in his mouth because he enjoys the sip at that moment. Thinking about the
wine in the glass or in the bottle would make the whole experience less
satisfying. It would be like dancing with one woman while thinking about
another one. Winos don't care if they’re drinking high quality food or low
quality wine, even though drinking wine is their primary focus.
Even
the simplest foods, especially if they are fresh, have subtle flavors to be
savored. Even plain pasta and rice have some taste to be explored. If you eat
with the goal of consuming the food on the plate, you tend to be less relaxed
as long as there is remaining food, and you’ll need to eat more to feel
satisfied. It is better to eat each bite as is if it were the only one. Improve
your weight-control efforts by laying down the silverware you are holding while
chewing, otherwise there is a tendency to prepare the next bite while you are
still chewing the previous one. It’s all about focus.
6)
Use contrast as a way of tasting your food better. Like color vision and motion
sensation, taste is relative. It can be heightened by contrast. The color one
perceives an object to be depends on the background against which it is viewed.
To the passengers within, a car that is accelerating rapidly feels like it is
moving faster at 30 miles
per hour than if it had been going much faster and now decelerating. Similarly,
a lone raisin can taste as sweet and more interesting against a background of
plain rice than a handful of pure raisins stuffed into your mouth. Clear your
palate. Eating the same thing bite after bite causes it to be less pleasurable
than if the palate were constantly being cleared by something with a completely
different taste.
7)
Exhaling gently through the nose while chewing enhances taste. Except for basic
tastes such as sweet, sour, bitter and salty, taste is olfactory in nature. If
you hold your nose, you taste very little of your food. Taste usually results
from simply smelling the food inside your mouth. The reality works best when
the vapors from the food pass through your nasal passages. For the same reason,
hot food generally has more of a taste than cold food.
8)
To the extent that you consciously or unconsciously pass judgment on food,
judge the food for what it is, not for what it isn't. This is a general
principle, applicable to almost anything - vegetarian pate, your spouse,
etc. Nothing is quite what you would have expected, so if you compare anything
to your expectations, you generally find that it doesn't quite meet them. This
doesn't mean, however, that you can't enjoy whatever it is that you are
indulging in.
9)
When not eating, remind yourself why you like being alive, assuming that there
is indeed a reason for that besides eating. Spend time doing the things you
like to do other than eating.
Keep
in mind that eating is very time consuming, especially when you include all the
time it takes to cook, clean up, earn the money to pay for the food,
refrigerator, kitchen, etc. Eating takes
time away from the rest of your life. Skipping a meal is a perfectly acceptable
form of laziness provided it doesn't
cause a junk food backlash several hours later.
And
if you are trying not to think about food, beware of negative thinking.The human mind cannot erase files the way a
computer can. It is very difficult to avoid thinking about something if you try
too hard to avoid thinking about it. The best way to not think about food and
eating is to have something else that you like to think about and/or do
instead.
10)
Don't lose weight for someone else. You might somehow end up resenting them for
it. If you think you are better off weighing less, then lose weight for
yourself. Self-respect is what good health is all about.
Things
take time. In our fast-paced society, this fact of life creates a huge barrier
to good health. It takes more time to
eat slowly and relaxed than to eat hurriedly. It takes more time to chew than
to gulp, to prepare fresh food than to eat processed prepared food packaged in
plastic, to eat vegetables than to not eat them, and to sit and let your food
digest than to get up from the table while you have that last mouthful of food
in your mouth. So ask yourself:
"Who am I rushing for? Do they really want me to rush or compromise my
eating habits? If so, are they worth it? "
[1]{This is to prod the body into burning fat
by depriving it of any other source of energy - sort of like bringing coal to
Newcastle so that its residents all start using coal-burning cars, furnaces,
etc.}
Part III "Snacking" is scheduled to appear soon. Meanwhile... Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill your plate and life with better choices.
B'SD 29 Iyar, 5775 The month of Iyar is ending, and with it the endearing message of "I am GOD your healer" (remember the April 20th/1 Iyar blogpost that clued you in to that?). To end off the month on an upbeat note, I want to share a fresh look at weight control and improved health with you. I believe it can help your mind, emotions and body to heal in user-friendly ways. A friend of mine prepared the good-sense content.
I sympathize with people who feel that they weigh too
much and have trouble controlling their weight. While such people are often viewed to
be lacking in will power, there is more to the problem than willpower. The main problem is often one of
ignorance about how the body works.
One Pound Per Year
Suppose a person gains, on the average, one pound too
many each year, between the ages of 10 and 30. It doesn't matter whether the
excess is accumulated gradually or in spurts; by the time the person reaches
30, they’re20 poundsoverweight. This is enough to
adversely affect their health, let alone their social lives in today's society,
especially if the person is single, more so a single woman.
How it Adds Up
Consider how such a weight gainer probably added an
average of one pound per year with today’s common eating patterns: They ate
roughly400 poundsof carbohydrates, protein and fat each
year, and stored only 1/4 of one percent of it. In fact, they stored an even
lower percentage of that because most of the weight in body fat is water. To
gain a pound of "body fat," you only have to store a small fraction
of a pound of actual fat. The scientifically minded skeptic who believes that
if s/he eats100 gramsof chocolate will result in a gain, at
most,100 gramsof body fat, is forgetting that s/he
will inevitably drink the water needed to complete the extra weight. A person who becomes30 poundsoverweight in 30 years has most likely
overeaten by a mere one part in 1000.
The other side of the coin is that if overweight people
ate even one percent less than they burned, they would eventually starve.
However, when they eat less they burn less. The body knows instinctively to be
frugal about burning energy when food is scarce, so it is often harder for
people to lose weight than to gain weight.
Hunger Chemistry
Hunger and satisfaction are determined by chemicals
(e.g., ghrelin and leptin) that many people never learn about. They react with
our brains, creating an internal "feedback" monitor that tells you
how much you need to eat. Without the feedback, people would never guess to
within an accuracy of less than one percent error exactly how much they needed
to eat. And, some people will burn off the excess weight automatically. This
ensures that they balance intake with expenditure. But this feedback is a
genetic roll of the dice, and it is tampered with by stress, boredom, and the
simple fact that our ideal weight is not the same as it was when food was
scarce, so our evolution did not prepare us ideally for our present situation.
Nothing in life is perfect, including this feedback loop.
Simple arithmetic shows that even a tiny mistuning of the
hunger feedback loop that enforces the balance between calorie consumption and
calorie expenditure has drastic consequences for the individual. Not even a
trained musician could easily detect a one part in a thousand mistuning of a
musical instrument. The most experienced auto mechanic could do nothing about a
car engine that was mistuned by one part in a thousand relative to its optimal
performance parameters. And yet a mistuning of an imponderably complex, subtle
hunger instinct can ruin an important aspect of a person's life by making them
overweight. It doesn't seem fair.
Want to read more about how to tame your time with food? Part 2 is coming soon. Learn how dining on the right food can help your body to heal. Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge.
Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Fill yourself with foods that support your inner and outer health.
B'SD 22 Iyar, 5775 Whew, I've been through so much since I last posted anything. My move was complicated by the need for a crane to hoist my furniture through windows as the staircase had proved to be too narrow to accommodate some items. And the the movers had somehow jumbled my belongings among the boxes. I'm searching in labeled cartons but finding other stuff than what I'd expected. The bureaucratic rigamarole of setting up utilities in my name, updating the address on my ID card and whatnot have eaten into my time. The loss of sleep due to local festivities and whatnot slowed me down, too (but that was a fun sacrifice). I'm gradually making order of the chaos, in between seriously necessary naps. Before my extended, unexpected break from blogging, I had promised to share some medically innovative information with you, so here goes:
Nifty, huh? Follow Me: Proxemics and Responsiveness for Following Tasks in Adaptive Assistive Robotics is quite a mouthful. But it means that these robotic butlers will not suffer moodiness or failure to perform. The people who benefit from them will have trusty tools for accomplishing basic tasks. Meanwhile, back to my personal life. I'm thrilled to have learned of family members buying each other copies of
They're finding the information so valuable that they don't want to lend out their copies to relatives who need them, and those family members are buying their own. Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
Find solutions that work for you.
