Friday 24 March 2006

Pic of the day: "Been like a slug all my life" is a pretty good description of me, I'm afraid. Then again I am not trying to join a sports team, just cling to life for as long as I can.

Health confusion

I think I had every reason to see an event horizon in my life. I have lived for 47 years, and you notice a lot of patterns in the things that happen, even when you don't analyze it logically. One of the things I have no doubt noticed is that when people lose 10-15% of their body weight in half a year, without even wanting to... they have usually reached the end of their tenure in the flesh. Even with the best of intentions, strength of will and supportive friends and family, it is a statistically insignificant number of humans who manage to lose more than 5% of their body weight and stay there. I had every reason to expect that this was the beginning of the end. After all, the rest of them had died (usually from cancer) not long after.

One day I am going to die too. But already so much time has passed that it seems unlikely to be from whatever transformed my body chemistry last year at this time. Looking back at my diary archive, I see that I had occasional episodes even before that were similar, but not day after day like that. I think it must have been good luck or a benevolent God that made me get on the trail of fat as the offender, that and some rudimentary knowledge of the digestive system. I remembered that the liver secreted the gall that gives color to the human bowel movements, and when the color temporarily changed, I suspected that liver or gall bladder function might be impaired. I still don't know exactly, but as long as I keep the fat intake down, I seem to get away without those horrible attacks.

More surprising is that I have far less pain in my wrist and hand than normal for this time of the year. Actually I feel some now, having written a lot today, but it is nothing like earlier springs for years now. It seemed to get worse and worse year after year, so this is quite a turn-around. It seems unlikely that fat can hurt wrists. The opposite sounds more likely, don't you think? You need some insulation after all. But I suppose it could matter that I have also been more physically active this past year. More physical activity leads to more blood flowing through the entire body, which is probably a good thing when it comes to avoiding repetitive strain injury.

Ironically I am walking less now after I moved here. There is just less need for it ... and the unusual quantities of snow this winter have not helped. Even the sidewalks are sometimes hard to navigate. And it still hasn't ended.

Whether for this reason or another, I've gained like 4-5 pounds since midwinter. (2-2.5 kg.) I have also been eating pretty much as much as I dared, which may also play a role. This is to be expected: The body tries to go back to what is natural for it. Humans really really suck at making fat from carbs or protein, but we excel at saving fat and using carbs instead if there is plenty of them. And since there is naturally some fat in ordinary food, my body scavenges it and burns the sugar instead. I eat so much sugar that some days I can feel the taste of it even long after the last meal. I feel soaked in sugar. But my stomach cries for more food, and carbs are pretty much the only thing I can give it. (A little lean meat, but I detest meat in more than the most minute quantities, and preferably highly processed.)

It feels kinda confusing that an illness that made me wonder about even surviving much longer, seems to have caused me to move about more easily, get less sicknesses of all kinds, regrow old sores and heal inflamed skin, and even repair a wrist that I thought was beyond rescue. It is as if a different set of genes have taken over control of my body.

Actually this does happen to us all, but hardly over the course of a month! Before we are born, the genes from our fathers are almost exclusively in control. Even afterward they continue to dominate for a while, but as we grow up we display more and more of our mothers' genes. Why? Sociobiologists argue that having babies look like their dad has obvious survival value, and I can see that. But what is the value of looking like your mother after she is dead from old age? Riddle me that, evolutionists.

Not that I complain. My mother came from a long-lived stock on both sides, and I will greedily accept each year or month that I get to live. Although their lifestyle was probably healthier than mine. Probably. Although with all the preservatives in modern food, it is almost strange we decay at all...