Cholesterol

Apropos of nothing: my cholesterol, heart rate, and blood pressure KICK ASS.

I've been on Niaspan for six months now and it was time to go in and have my liver checked (*poke* *poke* "yep, still there") and cholesterol re-taken and my HDL has responded nicely.

Six months ago I had the whole "we can't believe you're the same guy we've been seeing for years" experience when the doctor saw I'd lost close to 50 pounds and that my cholesterol had dropped like a rock after giving up eating meat... but my HDL was still not anything to brag about. Heredity, basically.

So today:

Blood pressure: 112 over 73 (used to routinely be in the 138 over 95 range)

Heart rate (resting): 55 (always been pretty low)

Total cholesterol (TC): 120 mg/dL

HDL: 36 mg/dL (up from 23 pre-Niaspan, up from 12 pre-weight-loss and pre-vegetarianism)

Triglycerides: 145 mg/dL (used to be off the charts)

LDL: 95 mg/dL (used to be MUCH MUCH higher)

TC/HDL: 4.4

I've got my old numbers pinned to a bulletin board at home. I should look 'em up later and plot out a graph or something.

Also, I talked to my practitioner about getting a referral for a sleep study to see what's up with the whole drowsing-off-on-the-highway thing I've posted about. She said it absolutely made sense and that one of their staff call and set one up.

I talk all the time about the Susan G. Komen people saving lives every day through their breast cancer research, treatment, and prevention efforts -- but honest to God, I feel like they've saved my life by giving me something larger than myself to live for and by getting me off my butt and onto a program of taking care of my health and fitness. Every penny I've donated (and I've donated a lot) to Susan G. Komen For The Cure is money well spent even if you regard it as essentially paying for a rather roundabout fitness and weight loss plan. And as you know perfectly well, it's much, MUCH more than that. (Give today! Save a life!)

I can't wait for the warm weather to come. If the weather permits (and last year it sure as heck didn't -- it rained all spring and summer long) I'm gonna spend a LOT of time on my bicycle. That's this year's big fitness goal.

Cholesterol

Apropos of nothing: my cholesterol, heart rate, and blood pressure KICK ASS.

I've been on Niaspan for six months now and it was time to go in and have my liver checked (*poke* *poke* "yep, still there") and cholesterol re-taken and my HDL has responded nicely.

Six months ago I had the whole "we can't believe you're the same guy we've been seeing for years" experience when the doctor saw I'd lost close to 50 pounds and that my cholesterol had dropped like a rock after giving up eating meat... but my HDL was still not anything to brag about. Heredity, basically.

So today:

Blood pressure: 112 over 73 (used to routinely be in the 138 over 95 range)

Heart rate (resting): 55 (always been pretty low)

Total cholesterol (TC): 120 mg/dL

HDL: 36 mg/dL (up from 23 pre-Niaspan, up from 12 pre-weight-loss and pre-vegetarianism)

Triglycerides: 145 mg/dL (used to be off the charts)

LDL: 95 mg/dL (used to be MUCH MUCH higher)

TC/HDL: 4.4

I've got my old numbers pinned to a bulletin board at home. I should look 'em up later and plot out a graph or something.

Also, I talked to my practitioner about getting a referral for a sleep study to see what's up with the whole drowsing-off-on-the-highway thing I've posted about. She said it absolutely made sense and that one of their staff call and set one up.

I talk all the time about the Susan G. Komen people saving lives every day through their breast cancer research, treatment, and prevention efforts -- but honest to God, I feel like they've saved my life by giving me something larger than myself to live for and by getting me off my butt and onto a program of taking care of my health and fitness. Every penny I've donated (and I've donated a lot) to Susan G. Komen For The Cure is money well spent even if you regard it as essentially paying for a rather roundabout fitness and weight loss plan. And as you know perfectly well, it's much, MUCH more than that. (Give today! Save a life!)

I can't wait for the warm weather to come. If the weather permits (and last year it sure as heck didn't -- it rained all spring and summer long) I'm gonna spend a LOT of time on my bicycle. That's this year's big fitness goal.

Lent -- and the hardest possible Lenten vow I could make

So there I was, slouched in a heap in an examining room at my doctor's office, waiting for a fasting cholesterol check. I'd had nothing to eat or drink except for water since dinner the night before and here it was, just past 11 in the morning. My thoughts wandered. I found myself pondering, "What would be the hardest possible Lenten vow I could realistically make?"

Since "death warmed over" just about summed up how I felt at that exact moment, the answer came pretty quickly: "NO COFFEE".

I'm not a guy who's got a coffee monkey on his back in the traditional sense. I can have a single cup on a Saturday or Sunday morning and last the rest of the day without any difficulties.

Really.

Okay, I DO sip cold black coffee all day from a 1-quart Nalgene bottle when I'm training, but appalling as that sounds, some days I don't even make it to the bottom of the bottle. I bring it with me to work just in case it turns into one of those days, but most days it doesn't.

What I'm trying to say is that I do drink coffee but I don't need six pots a day to just make it to the barely-human level.

But I DO need that first cup of the day. It's so essential to my metabolic processes that when I'm on the road, staying in hotels, I usually use my in-room coffee maker before going to bed each evening to make a mini-pot's worth of coffee to swill down the next morning. The mini-pot sits there all night cooling and by dawn has reached that perfect level of semi-evaporated room-temperature brackishness which does to my groggy brain approximately the same thing that a can of spinach does for Popeye's muscles. (Insert "KA-WHOOMBA" and onomatopoeic words to that effect.)

This morning I felt like a piece of warmed-over lunchmeat, hanging out on a clothesline, twisting slowly in a hazy cloud of ... I dunno, stupor.

I honestly can't imagine what it would be like if I got all bold and mighty and said "I WILL DRINK NO COFFEE THROUGHOUT LENT". Or even worse, if I said I wouldn't drink any caffeinated soda or anything else with the magic dust in it. If I basically went all Mormon and stuff vis-a-vis caffeine.

Walking sixty miles for the 3-Day would be NOTHIN' compared to that. I honestly wonder if I'd be able to do it.

So unless someone out there is reading this and thinking "heh heh heh, I'll make him a deal, I'll donate $100 to his 3-Day total and I'll go get all my friends to donate too, but in return for our $500 he has to abstain from caffeine throughout Lent", I'm going to have to think of some other meaningful Lenten vow.

(But just in case anyone DOES get the urge to make me that bet, I'm all ears. It'll be hell on Earth, but I'll do just about anything to find a cure for breast cancer. My donation URL is http://www.the3day.org/goto/jayfurr and if I get $500 in donations between now and Ash Wednesday service tomorrow night, I'll give it the old college try.)

Lent -- and the hardest possible Lenten vow I could make

So there I was, slouched in a heap in an examining room at my doctor's office, waiting for a fasting cholesterol check. I'd had nothing to eat or drink except for water since dinner the night before and here it was, just past 11 in the morning. My thoughts wandered. I found myself pondering, "What would be the hardest possible Lenten vow I could realistically make?"

Since "death warmed over" just about summed up how I felt at that exact moment, the answer came pretty quickly: "NO COFFEE".

I'm not a guy who's got a coffee monkey on his back in the traditional sense. I can have a single cup on a Saturday or Sunday morning and last the rest of the day without any difficulties.

Really.

Okay, I DO sip cold black coffee all day from a 1-quart Nalgene bottle when I'm training, but appalling as that sounds, some days I don't even make it to the bottom of the bottle. I bring it with me to work just in case it turns into one of those days, but most days it doesn't.

What I'm trying to say is that I do drink coffee but I don't need six pots a day to just make it to the barely-human level.

But I DO need that first cup of the day. It's so essential to my metabolic processes that when I'm on the road, staying in hotels, I usually use my in-room coffee maker before going to bed each evening to make a mini-pot's worth of coffee to swill down the next morning. The mini-pot sits there all night cooling and by dawn has reached that perfect level of semi-evaporated room-temperature brackishness which does to my groggy brain approximately the same thing that a can of spinach does for Popeye's muscles. (Insert "KA-WHOOMBA" and onomatopoeic words to that effect.)

This morning I felt like a piece of warmed-over lunchmeat, hanging out on a clothesline, twisting slowly in a hazy cloud of ... I dunno, stupor.

I honestly can't imagine what it would be like if I got all bold and mighty and said "I WILL DRINK NO COFFEE THROUGHOUT LENT". Or even worse, if I said I wouldn't drink any caffeinated soda or anything else with the magic dust in it. If I basically went all Mormon and stuff vis-a-vis caffeine.

Walking sixty miles for the 3-Day would be NOTHIN' compared to that. I honestly wonder if I'd be able to do it.

So unless someone out there is reading this and thinking "heh heh heh, I'll make him a deal, I'll donate $100 to his 3-Day total and I'll go get all my friends to donate too, but in return for our $500 he has to abstain from caffeine throughout Lent", I'm going to have to think of some other meaningful Lenten vow.

(But just in case anyone DOES get the urge to make me that bet, I'm all ears. It'll be hell on Earth, but I'll do just about anything to find a cure for breast cancer. My donation URL is http://www.the3day.org/goto/jayfurr and if I get $500 in donations between now and Ash Wednesday service tomorrow night, I'll give it the old college try.)