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Archives for February 2014

Boosting the Immune System

, , Life, Live and LearnView all 8 comments

I seem to have entered that oh so fun cycle of the never ending sickness, and no I have not gotten my flu shot, because I haven’t been able to.  Apparently you’re supposed to be healthy when you get the flu shot, and so far this cold and flu season I have yet to be healthy enough to get the shot.  I have actually been turned away.  For a while it was just one thing after another, but as evidenced by the stomach flu hitting two days into an antibiotics treatment, these illnesses aren’t even waiting for the old one to go away before attacking anymore.  So I have set upon a quest to find ways to boost the immune system, because quite frankly I am sick and tired of this – pun intended.

Since I can’t seem to focus my cloudy brain on anything else right now, you all get to hear about what I’ve learned.  First off, I’m going to throw out the obscure stuff – the odds of me taking my happy ass down to the health food store to find larch are slim to none, so out the window with ya!  Next I’m throwing out the ones that everybody already knows about – get more sleep, drink water, wash your hands, exercise, chicken soup, vitamin C, etc – because I’m already implementing those to the best of my ability (or ignoring because I tend to be even lazier than normal when sick).  Which leaves the things that made me go “huh!”

1. Keep your feet warm – my feet are ALWAYS cold.  It’s gotten to the point that I’m so used to it, I generally don’t even notice how cold they are until Bubba plops his warm puggle butt on them and I realize they my toes are practically icicles.  Well apparently there’s been a study that shows a correlation between cold feet and constricted blood vessels in your sinuses.  Constricted vessels means less blood flow, which means less white blood cells in the area, which means a lowered ability to fight off infection.  BOOM!  That song that they made us sing in grade school about everything in the body being connected was apparently correct!  I’m breaking out the fuzzy socks tonight!  Also, the next time I smack myself in the face and get a bloody nose, I’m sticking my feet in the freezer . . . or maybe just ice on my feet.  Yeah, that would be less awkward.

2. Eat better – I know that this is one of those common ones, but I have a couple of things that all fit under this heading.

a. Cut back on sugar – apparently sugar is completely superfluous for our bodies, we get absolutely no health benefits from sugar.  Bacteria on the other hand, love it and will feed off of it and get fat, happy and multiply all day long.  Same goes for cancer cells.  So sugar is basically food for nasty crap that we don’t want in our bodies.  Great!

b. Eat Japanese mushrooms – apparently they are chock-full of good stuff that isn’t found elsewhere in a typical American diet.

c. Black and Green tea – again with the unique good stuff.  I always thought that it was just green tea, but apparently black tea is good for you as well, just not as good for you.  Besides who doesn’t like a nice warm beverage when they’re sick!

d. Eat a big breakfast – as in close to half of your daily calories, big breakfast – but here’s the kicker, low in fat, or at least go with the good fats like in avocado.  Which means no bacon . . . yes, it is still Kat, I haven’t been abducted . . . yes, I did let out a solitary sob of anguish when I typed that.  Apparently the body needs a lot of fuel to get up and going properly after resting all night, but bad fats slow everything down including the immune system. Doing this means that your lunch and dinner are significantly smaller of course.  Unless you have some really awesome fat pants that you want to get back into.

Healthy Breakfast

3. Cut back on pain medications – one of the main goals of pain meds is generally to cut down inflammation, and one of the main ways that they do that is to reduce the white blood cells that are causing the inflammation.  Lowered number of white blood cells = more prone to illness.  This explains some things since I’ve been taking ibuprofen like it was candy for the past couple of weeks because of some dental work.

4. Journal and Do Crafts – Both are good stress relievers, and lowering stress helps to boost the immune system.  Who doesn’t want an excuse to break out the glue gun – “Leave me alone, I’m crafting for health damnit!”

5. Sex – yeah apparently having sex on a regular basis boosts your immune system.  Something about chemicals and hormones and the exercise and blah, blah, blah I stopped paying attention, because let’s face it, I was on board for this cure!  However, as a friend pointed out, going over to the corner bar and picking up random guys would probably have the opposite effect on my overall health . . . yeah, she’s got a point there.  Guess I’m going to have to stick to the other four.

So there you have it, be well my readers.

Burning the Candle

, , , , Life, Live and Learn, MothersView all 3 comments

My dad always used to observe that I was happiest when I was going Mach 5 with my hair on fire, and then in the next sentence he’d warn me not to burn the candle at both ends.  He was right, and it was a valid warning.  Not one that I’ve ever been able to take to heart, but valid nevertheless.  Lately, I feel like I have not only been burning the candle at both ends, but that I have cut it in half so that I have access to two additional wicks.  Oddly enough, this was completely intentional.  The beginning of the year is always very hard for me.  Toward the end of my mother’s life, my father signed her DNR and the doctors gave her a week to live.  This was at the end of November.  The doctors were wrong.  She didn’t die until February 8th.  We’ve all heard stories of loved ones hanging on for one more holiday, or birthday, etc, so it didn’t seem that odd that she lasted until Christmas.  But when the new year hit, and she was still hanging on, an anxious dread descended. Every time my phone rang I expected it to be the call – “Pick up your sister and come home. Mom just died.”  But January came and went and there was no call.  I was a ball of nerves.  Always on edge, not sleeping, doing anything to occupy my mind with something, anything else.

I had plans to go home on the 8th.  That morning my dad called to ask me to pick up some dog food before heading up the mountain to get home.  I said okay, hung up and hopped in the shower.  I was picking out clothes when my phone rang again, and for the first time in over a month I didn’t jump.  It was dad, but I assumed that he needed me to pick up something else.  I was wrong.  “Pick up your sister.  Mom just died.  Oh, don’t forget the dog food.”  She died while I was in the shower.  I will remember that shower for the rest of my life.  It was in that shower that the dread and tension finally released from my body.  Whether that was because I knew that I was heading home when I got out, or if someone how my body instinctively knew that it was all over, I have no idea.  But after that shower I was relaxed for the first time all year, until that call.  Then I was just numb.

Every year since then, I spend the month of January as a ball of nerves.  My body’s yearly vigil of grief. By the time that February rolls around, I have to consciously remind myself to relax my shoulders from their permanent position up around my ears. I usually try to take it easy at the beginning of the year and do things for myself.  It never works.  I’m a ball of nerves through Valentine’s Day.  This year was different.  If I’m happiest going Mach 5 with my hair on fire, then why in the world should I slow down during my hardest time of the year? So this year I over-scheduled myself.  I not only cut the candle in half, I borrowed a couple of extra candles and burned those too.  And it sort of worked.  Did my shoulders still take up residence around my ears? Yep.  Was I still a ball of nerves? Yep.  But I actually got things done – I fell behind on stuff because of my over scheduling, my blog for one, but I got a lot done.  My dad is right.  I’m happiest when I’m getting things done.  Starting tomorrow I’ll be able to breathe again, because the anniversary of her funeral will have passed and all of those years ago it was finally at her funeral that I truly cried and grieved for my loss.  It’s my yearly gauntlet and it’s almost over.  Tonight I burn the last candle.  Until next year.

Candle