webcowgirl | Entries tagged with health

Here's my review of Ghosts at the Arcola. I felt it was a bit of Woman in Black meets August Osage County - a non-stop action melodrama, with chase scenes and car crashes. And nudity. Or, well, maybe not, but I felt it was really a rip-roaring two hours and lots of fun, if you go for that kind of thing.

1. Just a little walk - one hour a week - improves women's health.

2. It's easier to sleep in cold room. Which is why I really felt bad for my friends in unairconditioned Seattle last week, and why, for all people are grousing about it being a cloudy, overly cool summer in London, I am grateful we've had the weather we've had - meaning I can get a good night's sleep pretty much every evening.

There's an interesting article in the New York Timese about how people's sleep patterns vary, both over age groups and just across different people based on genetics. Reading this:

"Bright light has a powerful effect in shifting the phase of our body clock, and if we don’t see much bright light — and many office workers do not — then our circadian health suffers."

made me wonder if a lot of the decrease in my insomnia (anyone notice a reduction in my complaints about a lack of sleep?) has actually been related to getting a window office at work, which happened, what, in the summer last year? I fought hard to get the one window seat in my team, and if I'm not mistaken, that benefit is still paying off.

Otherwise, my health is improved again today, though I'm trying to figure out what to do with a free night ... maybe I can get a ticket to see Man of Aran - might be a nice mental companion to Riders to the Sea. Pop-up tea room for lunch today, that's for sure!

Per today's New York Times, having friends can save your life.

"Proximity and the amount of contact with a friend wasn’t associated with survival. Just having friends was protective."

"Only smoking was as important a risk factor as lack of social support."

"In the study of nurses with breast cancer, having a spouse wasn’t associated with survival."

Anyway ... it's interesting to think that it's important to physical as well as mental health.

As for me, I'm still feeling pretty weak. This is not going to be one of those staying late at work days.

My new Alain de Botton book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, has shown up. I'm excited about reading it after hearing him speak earlier in the month. To quote my review: De Botton had interesting things to say about why people don’t enjoy work (”They’re not supposed to, but they think they are, so they’re dissatisfied”), why workplaces are bizarre (”They put policies in place to make sure you continue to value making money over, say, having sex with your coworkers”), what work says about us as a society (”It’s a good thing that people have jobs no one can understand, at least according to those that judge a society’s evolution by how specialized its workers can be”) and the biscuit industry (”Of all of the people at XYZ biscuit company involved in the design of the Biscuit Alpha, not a single one of them knows how to bake”).

Anyway, it was interesting enough that I went out and bought the book afterall. It's too late for me to get it autographed but, who knows, maybe he and I will sit down and have lunch today and discuss life after Proust, a topic relevant to both of us. There has to be more to life than Charlaine Harris, after all.

Also, Twittering with your mind - just the thing I think

butterbee would be researching if she didn't hate Twitter so much!

I felt too wobbly when I woke up this morning to go to work. I thought it might wear off.

Now, though I'm clearly better than I was yesterday, since I've been able to sit up for extended periods of time and am not falling asleep every two hours, I'm still not up to speed, as simply washing a load of dishes tired me out, and to be honest anything besides sitting and reading seems like work. So, given that I have to walk to the tube and then tube for 40 minutes and then walk some more, and then stand for an hour, then repeat the walking and tubing, I'm skipping going out tonight, even though it's something I'd enjoy, the tickets were a present, and we're going to lose the money spent on the seats altogether (grr). Instead, I'll sit at home, drink fruit juice, and finish watching Hairspray. It just sounds better than completely burning myself out before I even get to the thing I'm going to and then spending the evening being miserable and exhausted.

The aspirin has reduced my temperature but I'm utterly exhausted - after spending my entire afternoon pretty much laying on the couch (once I did my gardening).

I'm also well on my way to losing a few pounds. I just had some rehydration salts.

And I'm having sporadic stomach cramps.

With that, at 11 PM on a Saturday, I bid you goodnight. I think I will finish my Charlaine Harris novel ... or just fall asleep in about ten minutes.

Well, five months of good physical health have come to an end. I woke up this morning with my stomach making noises like jet fighters cracking the sound barrier. I initially thought it was hunger, but then come this afternoon I was, er, visiting the ladies' room rather a lot. And I was cold - "why won't the heater come on? It's freezing in here!"

So finally, ten minutes ago, I took my temperature. 101. Bah!

Tonight's plan was supposed to be heading back into town for a party, but I just didn't feel quite up enough for it - and now I'm grateful that, for once, I didn't push myself, and that I had nothing else to do that, say, would have required dealing with non-refundable tickets. They would have hated me having to get out of my seat every 20 minutes.

Next stop: possibly watching the video of Hairspray: The Musical - or just reading a little bit and going to sleep in half an hour, if my stomach will let me. And since I am moving slowly, I took the opportunity to upload a few more pictures of my tea party.

Okay, I think this is GREAT NEWS and have to share it.

"There is no cure for the common cold, but in an experiment that deliberately infected volunteers with a virus, researchers have shown that getting less sleep can substantially increase the risk of catching one."

I have often felt that the amount of sleep I get is directly related to my ability to ward off infection, and since I started, er, drinking red wine to stave off the effects of aging (per another article) and generally getting 8 hours a night (I think these things are related), I have managed to fight off cold after cold. I firmly believe that eating well and getting enough sleep and regular hand washing (and not getting colds) is the best way to avoid getting colds ... and I am right in one of these things! I have felt one after another hit this winter but I've just had a runny nose that was gone the next day - a huge improvement over last year. I've also been trying to adjust my schedule so that I'm not getting home after 10:30 so I have enough time to wind down before bed, and I feel like this has been paying off.

(The "don't get a cold to keep you from getting a cold" sounds redundant but I need something to explain the fact that when you get one you tend to get a million in a row due to your immune system being overtaxed or something like that.)

Also, some further advice about avoiding heart attacks: get tested for C-reactive protein, Mediterranean diet (the Sicilian cooking will serve me well), take care of your teeth, avoid chronic stress (like I had all of the last five months of this year), get enough sleep, and a bit of cardio. Time to add in a bit more cardio - brisk walking will work and I note it's sunny outside. :-)

I realized I've not been doing a good job of updating hear thanks to the miracle of Twitter, which is very distracting for me at present.

After Tuesday (came back to work and was tired; went to see some dance stuff), I had a Wednesday which was one of the low points of the year. Basically at 4 AM I was awakened with stomach cramping; at 6 AM I was somewhat delirious with exhaustion but had worked out (through various hints my body was dropping) that I had food poisoning again. I called in to work around 7:30 and tried to see what I could do to get my stomach to stop hurting so I could get some sleep. I did sleep and got up at 9:30 thinking I might actually make it in, got online, took a shower, and asked the vacationing

wechsler if he wanted to hang out with me for lunch (even though I didn't figure I could eat).

Then somehow things got worse. The cramping got more severe; I started to hurt a lot. I couldn't find a position that didn't hurt. Then while walking from my bedroom to the living room I started blacking out - my hands went all numb and tingly and the darkness closed in on the sides. I went into the living room and sat down and started panicking about being passed out on the floor with no one able to help me as I wasn't even able to sit up enough to look at the info on my computer and called

wechsler and asked him to please come over NOW while I could still get the door, then called J and told him what was going on and to please call me and W in 15 minutes and make sure W had made it in the door.( Medical details and misery. )

I have to say I am immensely grateful to Wechsler for taking care of me when I was in such horrible shape. I know J would have come home if W hadn't been just ten minutes away, but the fact that W was so close and could come over and did just saved my bacon. I couldn't even handle talking, much less getting myself to some place where someone could help me, and knowing that someone who could actually figure out what needed to be done with me was right there was just such a terrible relief.

Yesterday was a struggle for the first half of the day as I tried to deal with the exhaustion, dehydration, and stunning lack of energy (and being emotional), but I settled down and was able to feel about normal by the end of the day. Before that time I had a convo with the CTO of my company, in which the main point he was making was "we want to keep you happy and keep you here" but he was unable to explain just what sort of challenges he could give me to entertain me. At home J made dinner for me and W (bit of paybacks for Mr. W making him dinner the night before) and afterwards J and I looked at flats online for a few hours. I was pretty much tuckered out by 10 PM.

Which brings us to today. It's Friday, huh? I'd better try to get a lot accomplished - with all of the ill I'm very behind.

The Independent printed a list of the Top Ten Ciders in their paper on Thursday. It's actually much nicer looking in print than it is on the website. On the other hand, that's all I've got to link to, so that's what you get.

I've not tried only four of the ciders - Gwynt Y Ddraig's Orchard Gold, Riddenden's Strong Kentish Cider ("dry"), Cornish Orchards' Black and Gold Sparkling (yum!) and West Croft's "Janett's Jungle Juice," which sounds a bit frightening, more so because, er, it gets a best buy stamp.

Work was busy today. I made it to the gym, but could only go 20 minutes - it's not so much that I've lost muscle tone but I actually feel weak (lightheaded and overheated), with my heart hitting 150-155 bpm on the bike, which I couldn't make happen at all before

tonyawinter's visit. What kind of health am I in, really? I hope I'm all better soon.

I have learned something new and exciting this weekend. In short, it's just how long my spine runs down my back. There, at the very tip, some bit of bone has decided to readjust itself just a tiny bit. In short, my ass is out of whack.

I hurt. I hurt a lot. It kept me up last night because there were so few positions in which I could sleep that did not cause me pain. I was crying about it a bit this morning because it hurt so much.

I really want some aspirin.

I can't believe I'm supposed to be running a workshop at 2:30 today. There's a rumor that this stretch Jason found online may work for this ache. I am going to give it a try.

My Sallie Bowles costume was a hit last night, but, of course, I was left in the shadow of the genius of

shadowdaddy's Laura Croft outfit. Pictures will follow.

The last two nights I've actually slept all the way through, which is a bit of a miracle for me. I took an iron pill for the first time in three weeks Saturday night; might that have anything to do with it? I also dreamed that I was going over my schedule at the coffee shop I was working at and had to tell them to cut a day shift because I had got a $27/hr temp job and couldn't take shifts that cut into those times. I was very apologetic and was really concerned about losing the coffee shop job; what a relief to wake up and know I wasn't going in to it!

My eyeball appears to be healed up after last Friday's strange irritation, thanks, no doubt, to wearing glasses all weekend long (to my friends' shock, most of whom had never seen me in glasses in my life). I have no idea why it hurt, but I'm glad it doesn't appear to have been pinkeye.