Day 9 of working at a standing desk. Ow.

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Marjorie

Last week I decided for the third time in the past seven years to stand while I work. The first two attempts only lasted a few days each before I succumbed to pain and fatigue. This time has been more successful. I am a bit stronger, for one thing, and I give myself more rest periods. It might also have something to do with the fact that I found decent-looking boxes to stack the monitor and keyboard on, which do not offend my decor sensibilities quite so much as the cardboard file boxes I used before.

My setup

After reading Girl on Fire’s post on her switch to a standing desk, I caught a glimpse of my lousy posture in a store window and took it as a sign from the universe that it was time to stop sitting. Off I went to that budget store with the bull terrier mascot to look for fancy storage boxes. (Believe it or not, I do not have a spare $1,000 to spend on a retail standing desk.)

In setting everything up I referred to this article about ideal keyboard placement. I used sticky note pads to tilt the keyboard back to ease the stress on my wrists. The setup still needs some tinkering: the mouse pad also needs to be tilted, the monitor is too low, and the right side of my palm is being rubbed raw for some reason.

I work at home, usually from 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. On the first day of this experiment, even though I took my usual mid-workday break to run errands, I was still very uncomfortable after five hours. I reverted to the sitting desk for the rest of the day. After I stopped working my feet hurt so much I had to sit with them on freezer gel packs for 45 minutes.

The next day I was back at the standing desk, but this time I did the freezer packs mid-workday and again after work. I did that for the next three days. I haven’t switched back to the sitting desk again. If I get tired, I just sit cross-legged on the couch for a while. It’s a good excuse to continue my slow slog through all five seasons of Dark Shadows.

On day four my legs were better, although I wouldn’t call it comfortable so much as not-quite-agony, but my upper back and shoulders were really bothering me. My left shoulder felt like it was pressing down on the shoulder blade and grinding a nerve somewhere.

On the sixth day, when walking from my car to a building about 500 feet away, my hips were so tight that I briefly wondered if my jeans had shrunk in the wash. Gotta go back to stretching.

Energy-wise, I still take the first of my usual two daily walks but so far I haven’t been able to get myself to do the second one. However, for the last two days I find that after the initial rest period after work, I no longer want to sit down again until much later in the evening.

Mentally, I feel unburdened of a certain health-related anxiety, namely that I was turning into a wizened crone and my heart congealing into a gooey mass.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to arrange a standing desk in an office cubicle, but it might be a little weird in a big team room where everyone else is sitting down. Especially if you’ve taken yoga classes and gotten into the habit of adjusting your leg alignment a few times every hour, which results in unladylike muscle contractions on display to everyone.

And then there’s the issue of trouser hems. All my suit trou are hemmed for three-inch heels, because my Corgi legs look ridiculous in flats. Since only an idiot would keep her heels on at a standing desk, if I worked in an office, my hems would be puddled on the floor looking slovenly and getting dirty. Good God.

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Organizing your supplements: an illustrated guide

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Marjorie

by M.E.

When you start taking more than a few supplements, keeping track of them can get hairy. If you’re finding that it takes too much effort to remember your dosage schedule, dole out the day’s allotment, or reorder supplements before you run out, you could probably use a better plan. Here are time-saving suggestions based on the system I use with my 21 bottles (22 in allergy season).

Supplies

  • Squares of paper small enough to fit on bottle lids
  • Double-sided tape to affix the squares
  • Small sticky notes
  • Rubber bands (to keep the sticky notes from falling off the bottles)
  • List of supplements including tablet “milligrammage,” why you take it (“benefits”), how much, when, and whether and how much of the same ingredient is in other supplements (especially important for vitamin A)
  • 7-day pill organizers, one for each dose of the day: breakfast, mid-morning, lunch, etc.
  • Equal number of small containers (shotglasses, old film canisters, used B12 dots bottles).

The system

Divide your storage space into NOW (what you are currently taking) and LATER (out-of-season items for allergies, backup bottles, etc.)

List of supplements

List of supplements. Columns include: major ingredient; other ingredients and daily total of the major one; daily total; a column for each time you take supplements (here they are all at meals); and why you are taking the supplement (benefits). Scribble changes to your regimen as you go. Date each revised list. I take mine with me to doctors' appts.

Affix dosage notes to the lids with double-sided tape. Include how much, when, and maybe even why you're taking it. Make a new one every time you change the dose. (Dating each change would be a good idea, too.)

Label the last bottle of each supplement to remind yourself to buy more.

7-day pill organizers

Once a week, divvy the supplements for the next seven days into pill organizers, one for each dose of the day.

Small containers for daily dose

Every morning, transfer each dose of the day from the 7-day organizers to smaller containers (above) or closeable bottles for commuting or traveling (next photo).

Pistilles and pill cutters

Pill containers and pill cutters. As news of your supplementarianism spreads, you may accumulate unique pill holders from well-meaning friends and relatives.

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Test to see how fast your supplements disintegrate

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Marjorie

If you’re the kind of person who puts a ten-penny nail in a glass of soda pop to see if it dissolves, and you have 45 minutes to kill, you might be interested in this experiment from the April 30, 2012 ConsumerLab.com Newsletter. Apparently heated vinegar approximates your stomach environment, and with it you can kinda-sorta determine how much of your tablets actually disintegrate in your body. The authors say the test is more accurate than the common (?) home test of dropping a supplement into cold vinegar, but will probably not be reliable for time-release, sustained-release, chewable, or enteric-coated products.

  • Heat a 1/2-cup of vinegar on the hot plate of a coffee machine to 98.6º F (body temperature). Use an instant-read thermometer.
  • Place a pill in the vinegar, then stir continuously for 30 to 45 minutes. Don’t hit the pill. If necessary, move the container on and off the heat to maintain the temperature as close to 98.6º as possible.
  • Uncoated or thinly coated products should disintegrate in about 30 minutes. Gelatin-coated and hard-coated products might take longer.
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Moronic assumptions about depression

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Marjorie

I originally started down the alternative medicine path out of desperation for a cure for my decades-long, god-awful depression. (Here’s my April 2011 post about how I got rid of it over a period of two years with a diet change and by correcting nutritional deficiencies and thyroid and adrenal wackinesses.)

Adding to the burden of depression and mental illness is having to deal with the very large percentage of the population who cannot relate to experiences they haven’t had themselves.* Like feeling effing horrid all the time. So you learn not to tell anyone about it. For a year two friends and I wrote about our experiences with this and other frustrations of the illness on our (now-defunct) blog Blessed Depth. Here’s a list we compiled of assumptions about depression that tick us off. I’ve added one more at the end.

“Happiness is a choice.” Happiness is not the opposite of depression. The opposite of depression is Not. Being. Depressed. You can be non-depressed and still be miserable.

“Everyone has bad days.” …Which they know will end tomorrow or next week. Depression doesn’t end.

“You have to try harder” or “Nothing will be handed to you.” I had to work harder than a normal person will in his entire life just to get up in the morning, and I did it for years. We’re talking about completely different scales of effort.

“Lower your expectations.” Because you’ll be so much better off when you abandon your goals and accept your fate as a mere onlooker of real life, peasant!

“Count your blessings.” Kiss my ass.

“You don’t act/look depressed.” Acting depressed is not socially rewarded, and social exclusion doesn’t help much of anything. And why should I have to act a certain way to meet your expectations? Shall we bring back sumptuary laws, too, so you can tell how much money I make based on the clothes I wear?

All your health problems are due to depression, even if you’ve recovered from it. This kills me. My mood has been relatively fine for years but I still suffer from insomnia, brain fog, and fatigue. Here I’m editing my original Blessed Depth entry: It’s been a long time since a doctor questioned my assertion that the depression is gone (I always tick it off on the medical history forms), but occasionally the few lay people who know of my history will insist that those symptoms are proof that I’m still depressed.

I have said this before and I will say it again: depression doesn’t CAUSE anything. It is a symptom that often occurs with a bunch of other symptoms.

Depression is a mysterious illness that can only be understood, evaluated and treated by trained professionals. This is bullshit. Doctors frequently know little more about depression than what they’re told by their pharma sales reps. By observing your reaction to your diet, your environment, stressors, season changes, etc., you can make some interesting correlations. Even a negative reaction to something is a clue. The problem, of course, is that when you’re really depressed, just tying your shoes is too tedious too bear, never mind performing any sort of long-term self-experiment whilst exercising strict adherence to the scientific method.

In fact this can be an insurmountable obstacle, which is why I’m all for prescription drugs — or whatever works — if they can get you to a better-functioning place.

____________________
*…although I suspect some of these people are depressed themselves but are too — sheltered? stupid? befogged? unworldly? brainwashed? — to know it.

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Riboflavin supplements and eye floaters

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Marjorie

In my earlier post about my experience with eye floaters, I mentioned that hyaluronic acid deficiency seemed to be a promising theory as to the cause. I had found a CureZone thread discussing one of their members’ success with four months of hyaluronic acid supplements. Vitamin C, which unmistakably makes my eye floaters worse, can degrade hyaluronic acid, so the idea seemed worthwhile.

Unfortunately, the only store that carried it locally was selling it for $1 a capsule and I decided to postpone that experiment until I won the lottery. (Now I can find it online for half that price. Maybe I imagined the whole thing.) Although the floaters can be very annoying, I haven’t gotten horribly panicky about them because they’ve waxed and waned over the years, which leads me to believe that in theory it is possible to get rid of them, if only I can figure out how.

Recently my floaters got worse again. I narrowed it down to riboflavin (vitamin B2) supplements, which, lo and behold, can also destroy hyaluronic acid. In fact, it looks like supplemental riboflavin can cause all sorts of trouble when it is exposed to light, as through the skin or eyes. (There’s a good list of references at the bottom of that article.) I found a discussion of this unfortunate tendency in an online floater forum called Floatertalk, where several members had experienced an increase in floaters after taking a multivitamin.

Since I am obviously woefully deficient in vitamin B2, I am not going to worry about it for now. Instead I’ll just eventually try the hyaluronic acid again to see if it solves the problem.

I originally tried a supplement called Injuv, which seems to be marketed for the treatment of stiff joints and dry, aging skin. Apparently the Injuv form, which is made by several brands, is more absorbable. I have no idea how much more effective it is than regular hyaluronic acid.

The few food sources of hyaluronic acid I was able to find are items that few Americans eat much of, which might be one reason riboflavin has this side effect. I found a list of hyaluronic acid food sources on Sandy Simmons’ site, which also refers to an ABC News report on a group of Japanese villagers whose hyaluronic acid-rich diet keeps them looking fabulous into their 80s and 90s. The list is very short: animal bones, tendons, skin, ligaments; some Japanese starchy vegetables; and miso, which does not have hyaluronic acid itself but genistein, which enhances its production.

One of hyaluronic acid’s jobs is to increase water absorption, so it’s important to get enough water if you take these supplements. I found several accounts of people who attributed their eye floaters to periods of dehydration, and several people who found that hyaluronic acid made their floaters worse. I’m guessing that some imbalance of the two substances was involved.

Another thing that made my eye floaters worse was vitamin A supplements, possibly because it lowered my already-low levels of vitamin E, which plays a role in hydration, or so say all sorts of beauty product ads.

If you too suffer from these accursed things, you might compile a list of everything that makes yours worse and start looking for a relationship among them.

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On refusing to part with my gallbladder

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Marjorie

by Nancy

The battle for my gallbladder started in 1999. I was living in Seattle and receiving regular monthly acupuncture treatments from a local practitioner, Yehosha. In my mind that was how I was staying healthy. I noticed sensitivity on what turned out to be the gallbladder meridian. Yehosha told me that it was the “decision maker” and asked if I was having a hard time making up my mind about something. I replied with a little surprise that I was: I had recently fallen in love with the Southwest and was trying to decide if I should move to Arizona.

When I started having a lot of bloating, gas, and burping, sometimes for an hour at a time, I assumed it was just stomach upset. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it until one day it turned into strong, sharp pains across the front of my stomach and across my back. Even taking deep breaths hurt.

I went to the emergency room. When the attendant asked me if I was in pain and I replied that it was worse than childbirth — and I’ve given birth to five children — I was hooked up to an IV and given pain meds and a sonogram. The results revealed a large gallstone and an inflamed, enlarged gallbladder. I was admitted to the hospital for five days of IV feeding and lots of discomfort despite the medication. The doctors didn’t want to operate to remove the gallbladder until the stone passed and the gallbladder had time to heal, so when I was released I was told to return in one month for surgery.

I thought about what Yehosha had said about decision making, about being afraid of the unknown and of leaving the security of what I had here for another part of the country. I decided I was going to rest, investigate other treatment options, and move in one month. I WAS NOT going to have the surgery.

I compiled a list of foods that irritate the liver and gallbladder, which are responsible for bile production and processing, and a list of foods that cleanse them. No red meat, high fat foods, fried foods, nuts, or coffee (waaaaaaaaaa!). Lots of filtered water, salmon and other fish, and broccoli. An apple a day (they help break up stones), radishes, beets, and lemons. Chamomile tea for calming. Small, frequent meals rather than large. Digestive enzymes with every meal. Everything organic.

I focused less on restricting bad foods and more on emphasizing foods that help break up stones, and — the key for me — on keeping my body alkaline rather than acidic. Most modern-day foods and drinks are acidic. (Editor’s note: Trying to find reliable info on the acidity of different foods is frustrating, as sources frequently contradict each other. Sandy Simmons has compiled a list of alkaline/acid foods on her Connective Tissue Disorder Site, based on her own research and experience.)

I started feeling much better. The only complication was that I was losing weight. The gallbladder has to process that fat, so I kept an eye on not losing too much too fast.

Soon after, a spa in Sedona called me for an interview (I’m a massage therapist). That was my “go” sign: I put everything in storage and hit the road. The first night I remember a terrific amount of fear, but once I got to the first overnight stay and awoke the next morning I felt a little braver.

That was 13 years ago. Since then I’ve had two gallstone episodes, both in the last year. I managed to help the stones pass on their own, with some discomfort, with a liquid diet of miso, lemon water, and lots of juiced apples.

I believe that our body is our telegraph office rather than our enemy. It wants us to know when something is not in balance, whether it is emotional, spiritual, or mental. (The author Louise Hay is an excellent resource to explore the power we have to heal ourselves.) Our bodies are quite magical and intelligent. We are the pilots and navigators of our own little universe. As long as we pay attention and make the corrections that we can, it will cease its warnings. Obviously I believe in alternative and natural methods of medicine before allopathic, but we all have to walk our own path. I honor the body/mind/spirit connection.

Because I didn’t have health insurance, that five-day stay in the hospital cost me close to $7,000, which I also did not have. Two years later I had to file for bankruptcy. But I made it to the Southwest and didn’t regret any of my decisions.

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