M&M Monday

The Adventures of Maggie & Tabby Bobcat

This is how Tabby tells me she wants to come in the house:

Just hangin'

Going to the watering bowl.

Maggie gets very growly when she sees Tabby at the water bowl. She doesn't drink from that one, she has her own personal small bowl. But that doesn't stop her from grumbling.

Millie pretty much ignores the cat.  "We don't like cats."

Tabby has a favourite box in the hall linen closet. Off she goes.

Zzzzzzz . . . .

I've moved my work back to my office. And I moved a coupla dog beds in . . .

um, for the cat?

Maggie claims her bed.

But Tabby doesn't seem to mind.

Because she's a CAT.

Millie slid off the round bed onto the part of the slippery floor and it took a bit of finessing to get her back onto the carpet. So I put the extra bedding on the floor . . . 

Zzzzzz . . . .

Hullo.

I got M & M some Mercola dental bones. Millie eats them like candy . . .

Nom nom nom & wolfs them down.

Maggie licks hers and never actually eats them!

She just takes it with her wherever she goes . . .

. . . and sits there.   :-)

Energetic

I have never been the most energetic person. Even as a child, I would get tired. Mum would say about me, "She's not athletically inclined." I did dance & play field hockey & soccer in school. I forced myself to be active and take aerobics classes thru the 90's, but I've never had much stamina. Energy has always been finite, and I've had to be picky about how I spend it.

I've always admired people who have a seemingly endless supply of energy and can do-do-do their way thru their day, because just the thought of that level of activity makes me want to take a nap. This is not to say that I don't get things done, because I do. But often it's at the expense of other things. I can only focus on one area of my life at a time. This week, for example, I finally did the dishes on Wed. Shocking, I know.

I used to think this was a quirk of personality; like how some people are all happy when they wake up and spring out of bed like Tigger. That is not me. I've learned not to be grumpy, but it's always been hard to wake up.

Where am I going with this? It harkens back to last year when I went to visit my friend Robbie in Florida. She is a dear friend and one of my Reiki Master Teachers from 20 years ago. She will be 84 next month. She was having a procedure done and had to go off her thyroid medication (which she was on due to a thyroidectomy). She didn't sound her usual chipper self, and I thought she could use a friend to be with her. I hadn't seen her in 2 years since she moved, but I was not prepared for what I saw when I got to her house. She looked horrible; she looked like she had aged 10 years. More than that, her personality had changed. She didn't want to do anything, she was despondent and generally droopy. Where was the Robbie who was never home because she was at Tai Chi class or at a lecture with friends?

"I feel like I'm going crazy. I'm going to jump out of my skin," she said. Me to the rescue. She wasn't scheduled to see her endocrinologist til the end of the week, but I got her in the next morning. You know those kind of doctors who don't take time with their patients and don't listen and just scribble off a script? This was not him. He was so kind and caring and compassionate. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Robbie. What you are feeling is normal. This shows you all the things that a thyroid does." As he was going thru the symptoms, I was thinking to myself, "Check. Check. Check." If I were 84, & had no thyroid, I might feel this bad. Here I was thinking that I was there for Robbie, and this was my own wake up call.

So I started on Armour Thyroid. And slowly I started to feel more energetic. Everything was much easier. I got more organized. I went thru stacks of papers that were piled up in my office for 2 years. I found that I didn't get stressed out as easily. I didn't take 20 minutes to get out of bed in the morning, and I didn't feel so achey. I didn't have to drink tea thru the day to stay energized. And more than that, I could focus. I didn't feel like I was in a brain fog.

And then. There was an Armour shortage and I couldn't get it anymore. I had to switch to a different medication. I don't know if it's not the right dosage, but gradually I've felt myself decline over the past 5 weeks. I've gained weight. Just walking to the post box wiped me out. Going up the stairs was an effort. I've had well-meaning friends suggest that if I just exercised, I would feel better. Normally, that's the way exercise is supposed to work. The more you exercise, the more mitochondria you create in your cells, and the more energy you have. I know that. But I've had to Tony Robbins myself thru the day willing myself to move. Yesterday, as I was sucking in air as I was walking back to the house, I got an image of a wilted butterfly trying to move. And I realized, thyroid (because it's butterfly shaped). That's why I'm feeling so crappy--but it was such a slow descent. And I thought it was the stress I was feeling about other things. And then Costco popped into my head. So I called and they have Armour again. I made it to the phamacy with 20 minutes to spare. I took one in the parking lot, even tho it was evening, I didn't care. It takes me an hour & a half to get home from Harrisonburg, but I noticed that as I was walking up the steps to the house, I bounced up. My legs didn't feel all heavy. Not only that, but I felt lighter, and emotionally better. I wonder how many people are on anti-depressants when they need to get their thyroids checked. Ditto for chronic fatigue. How about ADD & inability to concentrate? I will do my best to keep my thyroid HAPPY.

Suddenly, the world is a different place. Time for some spring cleaning. :-)

P.S. I found out about Mary Shomon from Dr. Mercola. She's a wealth of information about thyroid disorders.

Dr. Dan Murphy's Airport Game

Dan looks at butt to belly ratios. He says that your belly should be 80% the size of your butt. If your belly is bigger than your butt, it means you have inflammation and are at risk for any number of diseases: heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer's, cancer, etc. Foods that are high on the glycemic index increase belly fat. So it's best to avoid those. Here's an article in support of limiting grain consumption by Dr. Mercola. He's a lot like Dan Murphy; siting more references than the average person has time to read. ;-) This is my intro into What DO you eat? There were docs joking that they knew Dan wasn't sneaking twinkies behind the organic apple curtain. He really does eat this way.

Eat a salad everyday. Grand Reserve cherrywood-aged, balsamic vinegar. He kept repeating "Grand Reserve, cherrywood-aged, balsamic vinegar." He told a v. cute story about a classmate of his daughter's staying over for dinner. She said, "I don't do salad." He said something like, "This is what we eat. Try it." And then he said, "Grand Reserve, cherrywood-aged, balsamic vinegar. She asked my daughter for a bottle for her birthday. It was her favourite gift at the party. Imagine an eleven-year-old girl getting excited about . . . Grand Reserve, cherrywood-aged, balsamic vinegar."

Dan says we should be eating 2 lbs. of fruits & veggies everyday. TWO pounds! Everyday! 25% fruits (rich in anti-oxidents), 75% veggies. So: eat a salad everyday. BTW, tomatoes are high in lycopene (excellent for prostate health) but watermelons have even more.

Wild Alaskan salmon. High in Omega 3 fatty acids (separate post later). He didn't say this, but in a pinch you can get canned. I used to feed it to Barkley & Remi.

Protein: Nuts~walnuts, almonds, etc. organic (but not "corned up" meat. He'll do grass fed beef or wild game). Omega 3 eggs. He says that you should have a 2:1 protein to carb ratio in your meals, and that you need at least 20 grams at breakfast. He does a smoothie every a.m. for breakfast, but I'll go into that in another post. Mmmm. . . smooooothie . . .

Guidelines for eating:
1) No food after dinner
2) 3 meals a day
3) No snacks
4) Eat s-l-o-w-l-y
5)Every meal should have protein

I think I pretty much do this--except for the snack thing. But a snack for me is an apple or Total Green. It's not like I'm wolfing down oreos or what Dan calls "cancer sticks" (french fries). So there you go. I think it's easy to eat this way once you get rid of food addictions & allergies (a separate post).

The Chemicals We Eat

We have become a nation that eats non-food. It comes in pretty packaging that gluts up our landfills and we are left tired, sick, fat and addicted. Happy Tuesday! This is Part 2 in my report of Dan Murphy's seminar & today is about food additives.

Many experts agree that the disease process begins with inflammation in the body. If you are in chronic pain, you have inflammation. If you eat food additives, you have inflammation. It's the precurser to Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, asthma--fill-in-the-blank. The following food additives promote inflammation:

Glutamates~ MSG: not just for Chinese food. It's in all fast food, processed foods, restaurants and has many names. It's what makes this food taste good. You can go to this site for more information on its effects.

Aspartame~ toxic! Gulf War Syndrome is now being linked to soldiers having drunk previously heated up diet sodas. Aspartame is even more dangerous when warmed up. Dan recommends: Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America.

Sucralose~ 70% of people who eat it have symptoms of cramps/bloating, mood swings, brain fog, nausea, headaches, joint pain, depression & dizziness. Yikes! Recommended book: Splenda: Is It Safe Or Not? by Janet Starr Hull, Ph.D.

High Fructose Corn Syrup~ another fat-enhancing, addictive substance that has found its way into the food trough thanks to politics. [Interesting side note: if you go to Mexican food markets, you can still get Coke made with sugar (I am not advocating it, I'm just saying). The reason is that Hispanics as a group have something in their biochemical make-up that doesn't like HFCS.] Dan recommends Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World for more info.

Anything that says "Natural" prolly isn't. Natural flavoring could be a real fruit--most likely it's a glutamate. You have to call that 800 number and ask. The company might say it's a "proprietary secret" to which you can say you are allergic to MSG, etc. and make sure that it's not in there. Natural coloring is from ground up insects, specifically the cock roach family. Eeeewwwww! If it says "carmine," that's code for cockroach. Fruit flavored punch, anyone?

Sugar Is there anyone out there who still thinks sugar is good for you??? Really? BTW, fruit juice, even 100%, is sugar.

Transfats anything partially hydrogenated. Margarine was originally used in machine shops as axle grease. Crisco threw in some coloring & flavoring & voila! It became a food product. It is not.

What does all this mean? It means stop drinking soda. NOW. Drink water. Stop eating fast food. Stop eating processed food. Dan pointed out that the cheaper the food, the more additives there are in it to make it taste good. The cheaper the food, the fatter you get.

For more information on any of these substances, go to Mercola and google. You'll get a wealth of information about why they are toxic to your body. He also has a really great newsletter. While you're there, you can also look up Bruce Lipton. Back tomorrow with the *foods* that are non-foods. Yay!