Wellness #42: Staying Well

The Symptom Checker and the Pill Identifier both seem to be incomplete in some ways. The symptom checker doesn't include some symptoms for adults, like skin rashes, that are shown for children. The Pill Identifier is missing some basic shapes like circular and cylindrical. They both can be useful in some cases, though.

The Interaction Checker has actually been very important for me in the past. My uncle was experiencing severe heaviness in his legs several years ago and could hardly walk. He had recently been prescribed a new medication by one of his several doctors. I checked it against the drugs that he was already taking and found this to be a sign of a serious interaction with another medication. Once he stopped the new drug, his complications disappeared. Interactions between medications can be a danger, especially for older adults, when they have a number of different physicians. It is helpful to have a free source like this to check.

Using the local Medline, I searched for Complementary and Alternative Medicine sites and found some interesting possibilities, including:

1) Center for Wellness and Healing (supporting immunity enhancement, natural treatments for diseases, detoxification, etc.)

2) a Humor Therapy Center

3) many therapeutic massage centers.

The Family Health Portrait can be a useful tool for sharing health information, especially on inherited conditions, with members of an extended family. The graphics it generates can also be used for other purposes to illustrate the relationships within a family for a genealogy study.

Addendum to Going Green: "The Happy Minimalist"

Peter Lawrence, a former customer at the Barbara Bush Library, was able to retire from his job with Hewlett-Packard at a young age because of his minimalist lifestyle. He writes of his success in a new little book entitled "The Happy Minimalist" http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=49829

Since this is so in line with many of the things people have discussed in the Going Green segments, I thought I would share a passage from his book about the benefits of public libraries.

"I am a heavy user of the public library. I see it to be the best use of our tax dollars. Here are some benefits:

1) It helps you to be a minimalist. You don't have to own any of the books you want to read. You can always borrow from the library.

2) Saves you money since you do not have to buy books, CDs, or movies.

3) Helps you to read, watch, or listen to whatever you wanted to read, watch, or listen to within a prescribed time. Because there are due dates, you are "forced" to spend time doing something that you wanted to do anyway.

4) It educates you through talks or classes they conduct.

5) It provides an avenue for you to donate your used reading materials, videos, CDs, and even art pieces. [Note: Peter donated some art work for our teen area at the library when he moved from Texas to California several years ago.]

6) It provides an avenue for you to volunteer.

7) It increases the utility per resource (upr) of the city. When a single resource like a book is utilized by several people over the lifetime of the book, the aggregate utility is significantly higher than a book sitting on someone's bookshelf at home and utilized only by that household."

Peter concludes this section with a great quote from Malcolm Forbes: "The richest person in the world -- in fact all the riches in the world -- couldn't provide you with anything like the endless, incredible loot available at your local library."

Wellness #41: Going Green, Part 2

This post is very helpful in suggesting easy-to-do methods that are good for the earth and good for you. My favorite idea that I want to try is cutting the junk mail. I have already been trying to stop junk faxes coming to the library. Most faxes we receive have an automated number listed on them to call to for remove your telephone number from the fax list. It just takes a few minutes to call, and in my experience, it really works. We hardly get any junk on our fax any more.

Something my family needs more commitment to do is to clear out our "electronic graveyard," getting rid of the old printers, PCs, VCRs, etc. We have been computer junkies for a long time, and still actually have an Apple IIe around somewhere. Such good memories!! Fortunately there are about 10 one-day drop-off events for Household Hazardous Waste collection throughout Harris County each year, even some at our library locations. These events do accept electronic items. To see the upcoming schedule, go to http://cleanwaterways.org/newsite/hhw/collection.html.

Wellness #41: Going Green, Part 1

It was depressing but not surprising to see how much more carbon dioxide a United States resident produces as compared to people of other countries. It was even more depressing to find that my family is above average, even though I think we are more careful than many. It looks like there is a lot of room for improvement.

Using the Yahoo! Green calculator, carbon footprint for my husband and I came out as 17.1 tons of CO2 per year, vs. the US average per person of 9.44 tons per year. I guess "per person" that is less than average. Most of our load seems to come from the vehicles we drive (9.88 tons of CO2).

The EPA personal emissions calculator was the only one that showed us as less than average (32,839 pounds of CO2 per year vs. an average of 41,500 pounds). We could reduce this by 25% if we bought a more fuel efficient car and tried to drive less. This version of the calculator was good in that it let you easily see how a change in your actions can reduce your emissions.

I have visited the Bayou City Urban Harvest market on Richmond, and the farmer's market in the Woodlands (http://www.grogansmillvillage.com/gm_gmshopping_farmersmarket.htmtm). I was disappointed by both, as lots of the items were over-priced boutique goods (soaps, heirloom veggies, candles, jewelry, etc.). It seems that to get the real good stuff, you have to arrive at the crack of dawn and be very agressive. That's not my style.

The farmer's market behind Canino's Produce at 2520 Airline is better for produce, but much of it is not locally grown. This is true of many of the farm stands near my home, too. They have some of their own produce (corn, tomatoes, beans, etc. ) in season, but they also buy Chilean strawberries, and sell that at a markup on a table next to their own stuff. As usual, buyer beware.

Wellness #40: Fitness

The fitness calculators on ExRx.net were too informative. They told me more than I wanted to know about where I need to focus. No surprises there -- eat better, lose weight, exercise more.

My life expectancy in the Health Age Questionnaire was 89.3 -- not too surprising as my Dad lived about that long and had many of the same medical issues as I do. What did surprise me was my Health Age. I was pleased to see that it was about seven years less than my actual age. Since you are only as old as you feel, that figure makes me feel younger and have more incentive to improve my fitness levels.

My BMI calculation highlights the need for improvement, but once again was not as bad as expected. I plan to make some lifestyles changes, and will be interested to see how this figure looks in one year.

Someone else doing this module felt that the Calorie Requirement calculator was too generous. I have to say that I agree. If I entered 8 hours for rest, and 16 hours of Very Light activity, it still suggested that I could eat more than 2000 calories a day. That seems pretty high to me. Either that or the diet gurus are promoting way too low calorie requirements for their regimens. With the emphasis these days on ultra-thinness as an ideal, that could very well be the case. Since I am not inclined to actually count calories, I think that just making better food choices, as suggested by the Nutrition module, will be my guide.

I learned a lot looking at the various websites. I sent the video on "deskercise" to all of my staff. I think it could help everyone feel better after a long day.
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-do-basic-deskercise

Addendum to Nutrition: "In Defense of Food"

A very interesting book related to nutrition is "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. His basic theme can be summed up in seven words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

According to the summary of this book in the Harris County catalog: "Humans used to know how to eat well, but the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused and distorted by food industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape dense with bad advice and foods that are not "real." Indeed, plain old eating is being replaced by an obsession with nutrition that is, paradoxically, ruining our health, not to mention our meals. Pollan's advice is: "Don't eat anything that your great-great grandmother would not recognize as food." Looking at what science does and does not know about diet and health, he proposes a new way to think about what to eat, informed by ecology and tradition rather than by the nutrient-by-nutrient approach."

If you are interested in tidbits such as the history of margarine; how nutrition labelling came about; the politics of the food pyramid; the search for the missing secret super micronutrient that can cure all ills ... you will enjoy reading this short but thought-provoking book. It's also on CD if you prefer to listen.