MEDICAL MATTERS

[Wendyf]

Thanks Maz, I wondered if it was standard medical advice in Australia.

[Marilyn]

They did go thru carbohydrates with him. I shall sort out exactly what the paperwork said for you tomorrow ( cos he has never looked at it!)
I find the trick is to feed him a plate of food that satisfies enough to stop him searching for other things afterward. ( we never eat desserts). I work on the clock face approach, so that three quarters of the plate is veg. One quarter is protein.
His recent camping trip with friends who graze all day has had lasting consequences...two weeks after the trip he is still reaching for a mid morning snack, an afternoon snack, and a snack after tea.
( and I thought I had won the war on those!)
I had him down to just one mid afternoon carrot! With a glass of mineral water! ( now it's a chocolate chip cookie)
It sounds as though I am a tyrant, but I make him walk every day ( several kilometres.)
I am just trying to keep us both in optimum health. ( he has Peripheral Vascular Disease, Sleep Apnoea, Diabetes, and has had a triple heart bypass, five arterial stents, plus a near death experience with Septicaemia).

[Wendyf]

Keep up the good work!

[Marilyn]

Oh I will.
( he looks so darn healthy, and we have a good life)
Just sad to have so much family history of heart disease and diabetes etc. hard to fight...

Still...there are folk much worse off.

Are you winning the war for Colin with your cooking?

[Wendyf]

Oh, he is totally committed and doesn't need any help from me, thank heavens! I just have to niggle at him to make sure he gets enough calories and doesn't drop any more weight. Funnily enough he can now tolerate much lower blood sugar levels, he used to start feeling very shaky and ill when he got close to 5, now he is still happy at 4. All the infections that were bothering him after the bladder ops have disappeared.
Luckily we are both enjoying our food, and don't miss bread, rice or pasta, (though I think Col would be lost without the high protein rolls that Lidl bake instore) and we love our full fat yoghurt and berries for pud!
I have dropped back down to 9 stone after slowly creeping up to 9st 5lb over the last couple of years. I still have porridge for breakfast and a couple of Ryvitas with my salad at lunchtime so I eat some carbs, but I still do a 5:2 diet because I enjoy it!

[Tizer]

Ryvita! Mrs Tiz used to eat those but she could never get me to eat them. "Cardboard!", I used to shout. Although I once did eat them but, in my defence, it was under extreme conditions. I spent a week camping high up in Snowdonia with one of my pals. His mother had packed the food for us. Half way through the week we ran out of the main foodstuffs and walked miles along the ridge and down into the valley to a village to buy food from the shop...and it was closed and nobody around to open it up for us. So we survived the rest of the week on Ryvita, spread with margarine and jam, and sweet tea and dry cornflakes!

[Marilyn]

Ryvita...love them with low fat Cottage Cheese.
Vita-wheats...ditto.

I have had the bundle of paperwork that the Diabetes Nurse gave us last year spread out before me this morning. I have no problem reading the printed material, but cannot now decipher her hand written stuff with her loopy/artistic writing!
I can see she has written about making choices to keep Fat intake to below 4g per 100g of food.
Also Sodium to less than 20g per 100g of food.
The Carbohydrate bit is the most difficult to read (!) but I think it says 40g per 100g of food.
I realise now that all these pages of guidelines are quite non specific...guess it saves on reprinting costs if someone just hand writes the current thinking in the margins! That way, they can chop and change current thinking and always be up to date without having to bin current handouts and print more.
We gave up bread a couple of years ago. Rice would be something we still consume once a fortnight, but we don't have much. Pasta we have every week, but mostly I just toss it through salad ( no dressing or sauce). A half a cup of dry pasta is all I boil up, so that isn't much between two of us for a salad!
I know I have mentioned our friends who "graze" all day. I should have added that I don't think there is anything wrong with grazing all day, and that it probably results in fairly stable blood sugars. But they are both slim, active people and eat too much carbohydrate for us. We would go on bike rides with them and their destination was the bakery. I am quite happy to sit there with a coffee I don't really feel like, but hubby soon appears with a little custard tart on his plate. Then there is afternoon tea, after dinner snacks and he wonders why he can't keep his eyes open by 9 pm.
All carbohydrates become sugar in the body of course.

[Stanley]

Good luck to both of you. The thing that strikes me is that if everyone was as aware as you both are on the importance of good diet the world would be a healthier place!

[Sue]

My brother moved to Bulgaria in November. He had a major stroke 5 years ago and the cause was never identified except he was just below the unhealthy levels for just about everything. After the stroke he became very immobile and negative. He was already overweight but it became worse and eventually he was diagnosed with diabetes. After moving to Bulgaria he seems to have changed his outlook on life and his diet. He now eats lots of fruit and veg, low carbohydrate and has reduced his already low alcohol intake. In 5 months his waist has gone down from 54 to 37 inches and he has lost 22 kilos.mhis diabetes has reversed, he is getting more mobile although he will always have poor balance because of the stroke. I feel he eats too much fat but whatever he is doing it is working. He is aiming to train for a marathon.he used to run with Brendon Foster, and a good runner he was too. The photos are unbelievable,taken by his GP at his three monthly check up

[Marilyn]

Oh...good on him.
Sometimes I think that if we give our bodies a big enough change, the "shock" of it to our bodies can quite significantly change metabolism and the way we process food.
In the end, if you FEEL GOOD every day and love life, who cares what damn size and shape you are? It is obviously right for YOU! Back off with the "health" messages! ( I say)

[Tizer]

Sue, I don't know what it's like in Bulgaria but is he living where there are fewer supermarkets and more real markets? Could it be that he's escaped the fast food culture and had a more `Mediterranean diet' forced on him? The Med diet can have quite a high oil/fat content but it's usually a nutritionally beneficial oil such as olive and used more with vegetables than for frying chips.

[Sue]

He has never been a fast food person, he has always cooked and is a superb cook, never ate chips and such but did cook rich food and had more than a heary appetite. He has completely changed what he eats but particularlyhasgone low carbohydrate.. His partner ( still in the UK) is Thai and when together she cooks mainly fish type meals but with rice and noodles. It is these he has particularly reduced and now only has a small glass of wine at the weekend

[Sue]

But I felt no hardship at all. Because I can eat plenty of fry-ups, plenty of fish, meat, vegetables and dairy, whenever I want and as much as I want (within reason) I had no sense of starving or depriving myself as I had with diets in the past. I've cracked the initial cravings for bread, pies, potatoes, and to a lesser extent rice and pasta, both of which I do allow myself of occasion, so I don't believe I will be recidivist when I reach my target weight. In fact I feel I may actually break that target.
All of this because of my research into diabetes that consistently showed it to be a a fully reversible lifestyle condition. Apparently that applies to diabetes1 as well!
Of course I'm not at that happy stage yet, but I am absolutely determined to get there.


A quote from his Facebook page

[Wendyf]

Great news about your brother Sue. The more I read up about carbohydrates the more convinced I become that the recommendations to avoid fat and eat starchy food as a basis for every meal have caused the current epidemics of both obesity and diabetes.

[Sue]

Yes I think you may be right, but to cut it out completely can also cause diabetes....there was a programme on tv about 18 months ago about both types of diet. It was very interesting

[Stanley]

I agree with Maz about wanting less 'health advice'. Most of it has turned out to be crap anyway.... I have never worried about fats, my attitude is that if you stick to natural fats like beef dripping and butter, they are fine as long as you burn off what you eat. As for the rest of the vegetable oil revolution, I read up my lipids and decided that 90% of that advice was crap as well, based mainly on the food processors chasing cheaper ingredients and longer shelf life and using their PR muscle to persuade us. Biggest change lately is cutting back on bread and spuds, I am sure that is better for me but I haven't knocked them out altogether. My only other obsession is that you should aim for as mixed a diet as possible and always start with natural raw ingredients. My pet hate is the 'Just Eat' campaign trying to persuade everyone to live off take-aways.... and of course the idiots who say 'they have no time to cook'.
The medical news from me this morning is that yesterday all my aches and pains flared up for some reason. Usually a precursor to a big improvement. I am looking after myself and hoping!
Latest medical news that has dropped in my ear is a theory that vaccinations given in the morning work better than those later in the day.....

[Tizer]

Those early exhortations to avoid oils and fats were at a time when British people were re-using their frying oil far too many times and effectively eating rancid fat, and a lot of it. Similarly, many fish & chip shops would have been using their fat for longer than advisable.

[Tripps]

Lidl high protein rolls - I've just traveled and got some of these. Not tried them yet - I'll let you know. Well done for spotting them - they are pick and mix with no information on the wrapper, since there is no wrapper. I eat very little bread at all these days, but I liked Bergen seeded bread when I did, so I'm quite hopeful. Actually Lidl's choice of in store baked rolls is comparable to Waitrose I'd say.

[Wendyf]

They are very filling Tripps, and do taste much better toasted! Similar in taste to the Bergen loaves.

[Stanley]

I like Wendy's dietary advice but will pass on the high energy rolls. I'll stick to the occasional home baked loaf.
Good reminder Tiz, time I ditched the dripping..... Not rancid but it's done its share.

[Stanley]

Tiz, I took notice. Deep fryer cleaned out, fat disposed of responsibly, not down the drain! Recharged with fresh best beef dripping.....

[Stanley]

Still on Aspirin for my shoulder but I think my back has healed. I'm pretty certain now that what I did was tear a muscle.... Nice to know my body can still cope given half a chance.
I remember once, in the days when we had to drive more hours than you could believe, falling asleep at the wheel and finding myself heading straight for a bridge pillar on the M6. Instinct took over, I pulled the wheel over and all was well. Only trouble was I tore a muscle in my back and, oh boy, did I pay for it for the next few weeks! That's one thing you learn as you get older, your muscles need plenty of notice before they are asked to do anything so bend over and straighten up slowly and give them time!

[Stanley]

Maz will be pleased to know I have finished the antique bottle of aspirin and will open a fresh sealed bottle of 500 325mg aspirin this morning. Expiry date 2004!
Not too sure whether the next matter ought to be in the Politics section but news this morning that for the first time since 1870 (LINK) the gap between the life expectancy of the rich and poor is widening. I keep saying that the Tories want to drag us back to the 19th century..... It looks as though the policies are working.

[Tizer]

This is a worrying development and another example of the mad world we live in:
"Pharmaceutical firm Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has been ordered to pay more than $55m (£40m) in compensation to an American woman who says its talcum powder caused her ovarian cancer....In February, Johnson & Johnson paid $72m (£51m) in a similar case." (BBC).

Regardless of there having been many investigations there is no conclusive evidence that talcum powder causes cancer. There are claims that it contains asbestos but talcum powder used in cosmetic and food applications contains no asbestos. People confuse the product `talcum powder' with the mineral `talc'. Some talc mineral contains asbestos but that is not used for these applications. Asbestos has never been found in talcum powder used in these applications.

And yet judges are awarding people astronomical sums in `compensation' against manufacturers even though there is no evidence that the person's cancer has been caused by talcum powder. There is now a queue of 1200 similar claims against the manufacturers. Where will this lead us?

[chinatyke]

The Americans moved to a system of absolute liability many years ago. This is why stupid people spilling hot coffee on themselves get awarded compensation.