Sunday 13 May 2007

Pic of the day: This is not the enemy. This is the friend.

Attack of the chiller fat!

The spellage is intentional: While I am uncertain whether eating fat can actually kill me, it can definitely cause me to shake with frost. It happened again last week.

It was on Wednesday that I realized that I had eaten too much fat. I had bought some low-fat chips, 45% less fat. Unfortunately I got distracted and at 55% more. (Yes, my mathematically inclined friends have already assured me that this is less than 100%, but 100 of the fat I would naturally eat would make me dog sick, since two years now.)

Since I don't know the exact mechanism by which fat makes me sick, I decided to try to lower the fat level in my blood by exercising more. I thought that perhaps the problem comes from the fat metabolism in the liver, where some pretty advanced chemistry takes place. I know I had similar symptoms daily when I had the virus infection in the liver or gall bladder (not sure which) that spring. Then again some of the symptoms come from the digestion, so perhaps it is the fat there and not in the blood that is the problem. Even so, I reasoned, the less fat in the blood the more will be absorbed. This may not be true, but it was a comforting thought.

On Thursday evening, as I began one of my regular outdoors walks, I silently congratulated myself with the narrow escape. Almost needless to say, the first symptoms set in within 5 minutes or so. Luckily it was a fairly mild attack, without the intense feeling of fear. I warmed my hands and face in front of a radiating electric heater – heat seems to be the only thing that keeps the attack at bay – and got through it with just some disturbance to my digestion and sleep pattern. Not bad. Now for a few weeks I will remember to stay away from fatty temptations, especially when I have to concentrate on something else. In time the experience will fade again, no doubt.